Avery Dennison Roll Materials Europe completed the installation and commissioning of its state-of-the-art coating line in October 2003 at Rodange in Luxembourg. The Rodange plant already had one smaller coating line, which was running at full capacity.
The new coating line is a custom-built system designed to run at three times the speed of previous coating systems and will increase the output of the plants Fasson brand emulsion adhesive products accordingly. The new coater will give high quality coating and laminating capability and also free up some capacity on the other coater (Lux1) for more specialist, performance-critical products and for R&D work.
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The plant supplies packaging customers with high volume industrial papers (such as the high throughput Fasson S2000N) and direct thermal and thermal transfer products. The new second coating line and a fully automated warehouse at the Rodange facility required an investment of €48m, the largest ever capital investment by the company.
The installation of the new coating line was started in September 2002 and took only 54 weeks to complete.
With the installation of the new coating line Avery Dennison customers have been able to benefit from the increased output and the newly instigated best practice and quality programmes, such as Design for Six Sigma.
CONTRACTOR AND INSTALLATION
The new coating line is 115m long and 2m wide. Faustel Inc supplied the equipment and formed a project team for the installation alongside Avery Dennison engineers. The installation involved the fitting of over 700t of components into the new line. The new coater was code-named Lux2 and is capable of siliconisation, adhesive coating and lamination in line. The system also features advanced process control, including ‘recipe’ control and in-line measurement.
The Lux2 is supported by a fully automated warehouse, which benefits from an enhanced finishing area with seven new slitters and a fully-automated packaging line. The finishing area also enabled the facility to extend the number of Fasson Exact and Fasson Exact Plus programmes it could offer to customers, which saves time and cost by providing rolls to exact width requirements for a particular job, without waste.
The system allowed the opportunity for the addition of newly developed ‘add-ons’, many of which are at an advanced development stage and will be ready for the next upgrade.
FASSON BRAND CARDBOARD AND LABELS
The Fasson brand includes an extensive range of specialty coated cardboard for primary and secondary packaging as well as labels for the packaging industry, including food, beverage, healthcare and automotive components. The cardboard for cartons can be supplied in a range of thicknesses and can be thermally sensitive for printing, or chemical and temperature resistant for food packaging in low temperatures and where oil/fat resistance is required.
The Fasson brand also includes labels and its Mix & Match programme offers more than 50,000 label combinations. The company can also carry out custom constructions for packaging through the Fasson Specialty division.
FURTHER EXPANSION
In April 2006 Avery Dennison opened a new Fasson roll labelstock production and distribution facility at the Rodange campus. The new coater for the production of self-adhesive laminates is 2m wide and 115m long and is one of the fastest in the world. The equipment was custom built and the second coating line has increased capacity at the plant significantly.
The coater is supported by a fully automated warehouse where all material handling is undertaken using remote-controlled AGVs. There were also improvements to the finishing area, which now features four new slitters and a second fully automated packaging line. This 2006 project is Avery Dennison’s biggest ever investment in Europe.
Michel Schutz, the Rodange plant manager, commented: “We urgently needed more capacity to meet our customers’ needs for our most popular Fasson products. The new coater gave us that, with its high-speed coating capability of 100m per minute. It also freed up capacity on our other coater for more specialist, performance-critical products, and for more intensive R&D.
“Our new finishing area also enables us to extend the number of Fasson Exact and Fasson Exact Plus products we can offer our customers, which save time and cost by providing rolls to exact width requirements for a particular job, without waste.”
ABOUT THE COMPANY
Avery Dennison is a worldwide manufacturer of self-adhesive materials, tapes and labels, office products, tags retail systems and speciality chemicals. Fasson is a part of the Avery Dennison group of companies.
