The "world's largest" isn't a term used lightly. So when Italian-based Torninova sent a note to PlasticsToday that the company is building the world's largest bubble wrap machine, we had to find out more information.

Torninova is located in Bastia Umbra, Italy. For years, it has built and sold machinery for plastic materials like bubble wrap, stretch film, draining dimpled geomembrane and masterbatch. The estimated 2014 turnover is 20% higher than last year's and they expect to reach Euro 13 million, Maurizio Mencarelli, CEO of Torninova, told PlasticsToday.

Mencarelli said that one of the biggest challenges the company faces is global competition and, more specifically, the Asian market competition.

"However, we know we can count on our professionalism, on the quality of what we offer and on the services that complete our products and show extremely high standards, which can only derive from the vast experience we have developed," he said.

As such, the company is delivering, exclusively to an Italian customer, a bubble wrap machine (bubble wrap is the air bubble film that is used to pack and protect fragile goods); which Mencarelli believes will officially be the largest one in the world.

"This machine makes 1.250 kilos of bubble wrap an hour - 135 meters of bubble wrap per minute - and goes to show that even though Italy is going through a delicate phase there are still companies who represent their country and especially our region (Umbra) in an illustrious way," he said. "I believe that this project is one of the many Umbrian excellences that we pride ourselves with together with our super mechanical technology that we export in countries who are namely more advanced than ours."  

This new machine, called Coex Bubble, is 35 meters long, six meters wide and eight meters tall. The cast co-extrusion system processes LDPE, TIE and Nylon-PA6 pellets to produce high-performance, symmetrically structured (ABCBA+ABCBA), multilayer air bubble film.

So do you think this is the largest bubble wrap machine in the world?