NEW COATER FOR AVERY DENNISON ROLL MATERIALS EUROPE – THE CORPORATION’S BIGGEST-EVER SINGLE INVESTMENT

Avery Dennison Corporation’s biggest-ever single investment, at €48 million, is unveiled at Labelexpo Europe: a new coater and fully automated warehouse for Avery Dennison Roll Materials Europe’s manufacturing and distribution centre in Rodange, Luxembourg.

Says Christian Simcic, Group Vice President, Avery Dennison Roll Materials Worldwide: ‘Our global positioning and knowledge base gives us the ability to serve our customers effectively by driving innovation with state-of-the-art manufacturing capabilities like this. Customers can benefit at a local and regional level from our investments and best practice programmes, such as Design for Six Sigma, which drive consistent quality that you can depend on. Customers can also benefit from the intense focus on innovation to drive their topline growth and reduce their cost through for instance local Exact programs and products such as Fasson S2000N from this new coater that can double the converting speed on our customers presses.'

The new, 2 meter wide and 115 meter long, custom-built state-of-the-art second coating line in Luxembourg complements another new 2 meter coater commissioned this summer at Avery Dennison Roll Materials European plant in Champ-sur-Drac, France, both with a focus on coating Fasson branded Prime Paper and VIP (Thermal, Thermal Transfer, Laser and EDP) products. ‘With these investments, we are demonstrating our commitment to being the industry leader in all key product areas in our industry, Papers, VIP and Films,' states Don Stoebe, VP GM Roll Materials Europe.

The Rodange plant is strategically located to serve customers throughout Europe – and across the world’s five continents - and has, since its opening in 1990, been a showcase for state-of-the-art adhesive coating and lamination.

Plant Manager Annick Imbert regards the new coater as a reward for 12 years of hard work on the part of the Luxembourg team and its original coater – which, when it was built, also represented a global milestone in coating technology. ‘We urgently needed more capacity to meet our customers’ needs for our most popular products. The new coater gives us that, with its state-of-the-art high quality coating and laminating capability, and it will also free up capacity on our other coater for more specialist, performance-critical products and for more intensive R & D.'

‘The whole installation – which culminates in start-up on October 1 – has broken Avery Dennison’s world record for completion of such a project. It’s taken just 54 weeks from start to finish, and I would like to congratulate Michael Schuetz and the project team who achieved this remarkable result. They worked 24/7, overseeing budgets, engineering, equipment specifications, installation, start-up trials and product qualification. It has been a huge undertaking, and it is a tribute to the project team’s planning skills that the production staff have been able to keep the show running on the other coater without interruption.’

Lux 2, as the new coater is code-named, is capable of siliconisation, adhesive coating, and lamination in line, and features advanced process control, including ‘recipe’ control and in-line measurement and man-machine interfacing to ensure the highest quality consistently.

Lux 2 is supported by a new fully-automated warehouse, and benefits from an enhanced finishing area featuring new slitters and a fully-automated packaging line. The new finishing area will also enable the factory to extend the number of Fasson Exact and Fasson Exact Plus programs it can offer to customers, which save time and cost by providing rolls to exact width requirements for a particular job, without waste.

Says Annick Imbert: ‘We have ambitious plans for Lux 2 for the future. It offers a number of opportunities for leading-edge “add ons”, many of which are already at an advanced development stage. But our initial desire is to serve our customers with the Fasson-brand products they want – faster, and to the highest possible quality standards. Our brand positioning

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