This year Mondi Consumer Flexibles celebrates the 50th anniversary of its largest production plant – Unterland Flexible Packaging. The company, located in Kufstein, Austria, was founded in 1959 by Dr Alfred Labek and has continuously grown to be a specialist for the production and processing of film made from polyethylene and polypropylene.
Long-standing experience and individual solutions are the key to success since the establishment of the company in the 1950s. “Our customers especially appreciate the innovative competence, the flexibility, the quality of service and our reliability,” says Jakob Mosser, CEO of Mondi Consumer Flexibles. “In the upcoming years the plant will have a stronger focus on processing, printing and converting. With this, the entire production process can be carried out in our plant – establishing an even more competitive edge.”
In 1972 a new, larger production site was built in Langkampfen, near Kufstein, and took a pioneering role for linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) shrink and stretch film. The innovative competences of the company also led to the early decision to invest in stretch-wrap film for agricultural applications.
Today Unterland Flexible Packaging is one of the largest producers of agricultural stretch-wrap – also
known as Agri Stretch – in Europe and benefits from the optimal geographic location of the plant. The company was the first plant in Austria certified for production of film with clean room technology. Since then high-quality cast-polypropylene (CPP) film has been produced for the medical, pharmaceutical and food industries and marketed under the brand name Clean Cast Technology®.
Since 2007 Unterland Flexible Packaging has been part of Mondi, a global paper and packaging group, and completes the product portfolio of the business unit Consumer Flexibles within the Europe and international division.
The reorientation of the company led to several modernisation projects and investments in new
technologies and machinery, such as new multilayer extrusion facilities, a ten-colour flexo-printing
machine and high-performance converting equipment.
“Following the internal realignment the site in
Kufstein was established as Consumer Flexibles’ competence centre for ‘wicketed bags’, plastic bags
for the food and hygiene industry. This has also led to a reinforcement of our position in Austria,” explains Manfred Schlapps, managing director of Unterland Flexible Packaging.
One major success factor is the investment in employees. The focused schooling and development of apprentices as qualified production operators plays an essential role. Continuous training and education of all employees is a matter of course. “A large number of our employees has been working in the company for many years and has a great wealth of experience as well as new insights to help
shape the successful future of the company,” Manfred Schlapps points out.
The product portfolio of Unterland Flexible contains transport packaging, safety packaging and film packaging for
industrial products, agricultural packaging as well as packaging for consumer goods and medical
engineering products. More than 80% of sales by Unterland Flexible Packaging are generated outside
of Austria, with increasing involvement in the Asian and north American markets in addition to the
main sales markets of Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain, Scandinavia, Poland and Hungary.