PETpla.net Insider 04 / 2012

NEWS 9 PET planet insider Vol. 13 No. 04/12 www.petpla.net Engel expands Schwertberg site Engel Austria is investing some €12 million in the expan- sion of its headquarters at Schwertberg in Upper Austria. The manufacturer of injection moulding machines and automa- tion specialist is taking the step to handle the rising volume of orders world-wide, improve working conditions on the site and underline its commitment to company premises in Austria. An additional 6,000m² of floor space will be created at the south- ern end of the factory. The shipping, incoming goods and storage areas will be the main beneficiaries of the expansion; the assembly area will also increase in size. There will be more loading and unloading spaces for lorries and containers, and trucks will be able to drive straight into the building. This means that staff working in the logistics division will no longer be exposed to the weather. Workstations in the assembly and warehouse areas will also be ergonomically redesigned. Construction work adjacent to Schwertberg railway station is scheduled for completion by the end of the year. Schwertberg is both the headquarters and the largest site of the Engel group. More than two thirds of the group’s 3,900 employ- ees are based in Austria; the company also has factories in St.Valentin and Dietach. www.engel.at Gneuss nets four lines in Brazil Brazilian recycling companies Unnafibras Textil S.A. and Nova Pack Embalagens Ltda have installed a total of four recycling lines produced by Gneuss Kunststofftechnik GmbH, of Bad Oeynhausen, Germany. Unnafibras has purchased two lines for textile fibre production and a third for bottle-to-bottle recycling. The two machines at its headquarters in Santo André produce co-extruded polyester fibres from recycled material, with a total capacity of 1,500kg/h. The third line, located at the company’s factory in Paraiba, has a capacity of 2,000 kg/h and produces pellets from PET bottle flakes for use by local injec- tion moulding companies in bottle preform production. Nova Pack, which manufactures thermoforming sheet made of PET, PP and PS, has bought an extrusion line with a Multi Rota- tion System (MRS) Extruder. It undertakes dehumidification of recycled material without pre-treatment, includes a rotary filtration system for removal of contaminated particles and has an online viscometer for automatic control of melt viscosity. The line enables Nova Pack to produce packaging from 100% recycled material. www.gneuss.com Schoeller subsidiary takes over ProTec Ohl Engineering GmbH PET Recycling Technologies, a subsidiary of Schoeller Industries, of Pullach near Munich, will complete the acquisition of ProTec, the Mann+Hummel subsidiary, on April 30, 2012. This acquisition leads to the expansion of the new owners’ Schoeller Plast Industries division, which operates in the field of plastics processing and recycling. Schoeller has also taken on all employees from ProTec. Schoeller Plast Industries operates worldwide and provides reusable packaging systems, caps for drinks bottles, and systems for processing and recycling of plas- tics. Ohl Engineering designs and promotes turnkey PET bottle-to-bottle recycling units. ProTec is a vendor of devices and systems for material handling in the plastics industry. Its turnover in 2011 was around €22 million. www.ohl-eng.com