PETpla.net Insider 09 / 2013

EDITOURS REPORTS 24 PET planet insider Vol. 14 No. 09/13 www.petpla.net February 27, 2013 Industrias Lara Bisch S.A., La Paz We met: Roberto Renjel Doria Medina, CEO; Felipe Villarroel, Finance During further processing operations where a high proportion of manual involvement is called for, the terminals take care of input to the production planning system. Next to them is Rob- erto Renjel Doria Medina, Managing Director of ILB. Specialists in packaging Industrias Lara Bisch (ILB) are Bolivia’s packaging specialists. In addition to a wide range of paper and card- board products, the company primarily produces printed sheets for sectors such as flow-pack packaging (bever- ages and food), advertising and labels for the beverages industry. They have an annual turnover of around US $20million. One speciality here is sheets for flow-pack beverages. It is here that the 3-ply foil sheets for the flow-pack beverages are printed. ILB was established by German immigrants in the late 1920s. Today the company is still in family ownership. Three years ago a new, young team embarked on turn- ing the company around and putting it on a profitable path. CEO Roberto Renjel Doria Medina, 36 years of age, is assisted by a management team not one of whom is over 40. Previously the company was very much product-led, now the focus is on meeting specific customer require- ments. In addition, Roberto and his team have built up service teams who make a point of investigating the machinery at the customer’s premises, evaluating how ILB’s products best fit requirements, and coming up with appropriate proposals. Today ILB process 80t of plastic into sheets. The latest installation is a Novagraf flexo-printing system. In front of it, to the left, Felipe Villaroel, in the middle Roberto Renjel Doria Medina and Alexander Büchler on the right. In the background the single-ply blow machinery. One example is the flow pack used for packaging soft drinks and milk products. The state gives every school-age pupil a serving of milk in a flow-pack bag. The sheet used for this is three-ply in structure and is produced by ILB in- house. Inside there is a black layer to prevent the ingress of light and oxygen, then the actual backing layer, likewise made from the same material but in white. After this comes the printing. The final layer is a transparent layer covering the pack. Hitherto, manufacturers of this type of packag- ing have been demanding 100μm thick sheets; using new additives, ILB has developed a type of foil sheeting with a thickness of 60μm. The advantages from a packing point of view are clear:  You get more packaging from one kg of foil  No need to change the foil rolls on the machine quite so often  Logistics expenditure is less because fewer rolls are needed  Possibility of processing the foil on the existing installations  Lower costs whilst maintaining same quality  Nevertheless, the processors stopped short of taking on the 60μm foil. Some of them have now converted to 80μm. A compromise between gut feeling and technical feasibility. 360° 360° 360°