Packaging propels Thai plastics

Thailand happens to be the main market for Windmöller & Hölscher (W&H; Lengerich, Germany) in Southeast Asia, and its second biggest in all of Asia. “The country’s technological needs are constantly rising in line with demand for increasingly higher-quality and higher-performance packaging,” according to Michael Fischer, managing director, Asia Pacific. One example of this is the recent delivery of a 10-color Miraflex flexographic printing press to Prepack Thailand (Bangkok). The print width is 1450 mm and speed is up to 370 m/min.

Fischer says that Thai converters have, over the years, come to utilize highly automated machinery at high efficiency levels to get the very last kilogram out of their production lines. “And they have to do so in order to stay competitive in the export market,” he adds.

Thailand is also a key market for Reifenhaüser (Troisdorf, Germany). The film, sheet, and profile extrusion line supplier presented its latest developments to local processors at a customer event alongside Tiprex, including its film-flattening device for blown film applications, such as label film, where a high degree of flatness is required.

“Processors demand gauge accuracy, but if they achieve this, it doesn’t mean they also achieve film flatness,” says Kurt Freye, director of global sales at Reifenhaüser Kiefel Extrusion (also Troisdorf). “If the film has bagginess, wrinkles will appear when it is laminated onto a rigid substrate like paper.” The film-flattening device heats the film between rollers, stretches it by 1%-2%, and then cools it so it is no longer baggy.

The company also commented on the integration of recently acquired Kiefel Extrusion, with managing director Ulrich Reifenhaüser saying, “Turnover in the machine building business is lousy right now—very lousy. But we therefore have engineering capacity available so that instead of taking nine months to integrate Kiefel, we will take three.”

Recognizing the importance of the packaging sector in Thailand is Machines Dubuit (Noisy-le-Grand, France), which manufactures a variety of screen-printing machinery locally through its affiliate Dubuit Far East (Pathumthani). The latest made-in-Thailand offering is the Universal High Speed UV 249 screen-printing machine developed under the philosophy of faster, cheaper, and easier to maintain. Capable of printing up to 10 colors inline at a rate of 6000 objects/hr, the 249 can print on cylindrical, oval, and flat surfaces.

A second new development at Dubuit is its 105 semiautomatic screen printer. Company owner Francois Dubuit says the aim is to offer the cheapest semiautomatic unit in the world: “Our target price is $2000-$2500.” The single-color unit’s output is between 600 and 1000 pieces per hour. To keep ahead of competition from China, Dubuit adopts a mechanical system in its screen-printing machinery instead of the commonly used pneumatic drive. Dubuit also manufactures the majority of its components in-house to ensure quality and to control delivery time.

Francois Dubuit says his firm’s last financial year proved challenging, with the company only shipping 70 machines, although it has seen a swift turnaround since. “We have already shipped close to the same number of machines in the last four months,” he says.

Drying for less
Tiprex wasn’t all about packaging, however. A range of dryers presented by Vismec Srl (Camposampiero, Italy) employ a rotor wheel honeycomb structure that the company says delivers significant energy savings over traditional technologies. The Dryplus series of dryers guarantee 40% less energy consumption compared with twin-tower desiccant drying technology, according to Carlo Bonaventura, operation manager at Vismec. “They also feature an auto setup mode where the operators need only input resin type and desired output,” he adds.

Dryplus dryers also allow dewpoint to be set freely in order to reduce the stress on the polymer and to optimize the viscosity in processing equipment. Furthermore, no water is required with the plug-and-play dryer range, and the desiccant operating life is five years.

In addition, Dryplus dryers feature a Safety Loading System that prevents the use of material before it has been properly dried. A countdown timer on the display indicates when the material is dry and ready to process.

The dryers can also be fitted with an integrated feeding system to convey undried material to the drying hopper and then dried material to the processing machine. In this case, Material Protection Management (MPM) can constantly monitor the throughput of dried material and automatically adjust the airflow. If the processing machine stops due to a fault, for example, the MPM system recognizes this and the Dryplus automatically recognizes this and goes into standby mode.

Polymer branding
Whereas in the past resin suppliers in Thailand were known by their corporate names rather than their products, the strategy at PTT Chemical Public Co. (Bangkok) is to build its InnoPlas brand. The brand was inaugurated around one year ago, according to Dhanes Charoensupaya, executive VP of marketing, commercial, and supply chain governance at PTT Chemical.

This brand-building exercise comes as the supplier is adding significant capacity. It recently added 300,000 tonnes/year of new high-density polyethylene (HDPE) capacity to its 500,000 tonnes/year of existing HDPE capacity. Furthermore, a new linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) line with capacity of 400,000 tonnes/year also just came online. In addition, a 300,000-tonnes/year low-density polyethylene (LDPE) plant is scheduled to come onstream by Q1 2010.

“The timing of the new plants is good, particularly for LDPE, which is widely used in packaging,” says Charoensupaya. “Thai packaging converters are exporting their products worldwide. We want to concentrate on partnerships with our customers so that they can compete in the high-tech plastics industry on a global basis.” —Stephen Moore