ORLANDO, FLA. (April 2, 8:45 p.m. ET) — Gloucester Engineering Co. Inc. (Booth 3343) of Gloucester, Mass., announced that film and sheet extruder Grupo Reyma of Leon, Mexico, is spending more than $6 million on four new monolayer polypropylene sheet lines that will be installed at a new factory in Nogales, Mexico.
Officials made the announcement at a Gloucester news conference Monday at NPE2012. The order was placed on Monday.
Grupo Reyma’s products are used in food packaging including polystyrene foam and PP products, polyethylene bags and cast PE stretch film. The company is owned by the Reyes family. It was founded by Benjamin Reyes more than 40 years ago.
“Our goal is to continue to penetrate the North American market and Gloucester Engineering’s products and service will help us achieve that,” said Rodrigo Reyes, operations director.
Grupo Reyma’s first nanolayer cast film line from Gloucester has been installed in its headquarters factory in Leon. The nanolayer line produces cast stretch co-extruded film with higher than typical five-seven layers of standard multilayer line. The film produced on this line is used in proprietary PE stretch film applications, officials said.
Gloucester also is on the hunt for bolt-on acquisitions, said Michael Ranson, chairman of the board for Gloucester and partner with Blue Wolf Capital Partners LLC in New York. Blue Wolf owns Gloucester. Blue Wolf has $118 million in committed private equity funds and is backed by large pension funds.
“Access to capital is not a problem,” Ranson said in an April 2 interview at NPE.” Gloucester has been and will be a leader in the extrusion industry.”
Gloucester recently acquired blown film specialist Future Design Inc. of Mississauga, Ontario. It has its own exhibit at NPE2012, at Booth 5444.
During the show, Gloucester announced several new technologies including blown film cooling technology for both internal and external cooling. It features increased output, superior bubble stability, better gauge control, in-line volatile extraction capabilities, and manual and automatic profile control. Cooling technology is available for dies from 1” to 100” diameter.
Its blown film die technology features the latest advances including new thermal control capabilities. Other improvements include lower residence times, faster transitions, quicker start up, reduced gauge variation and less overall waste. The company designs and manufactures blown film dies for mono through 9-layer configurations.
Its energy efficient extrusion features a new energy-saving extruder heating package that provides a lower kw/kg energy utilization. The extrusion systems incorporate Gloucester’s Light Grooved feed design for greater process stability and throughput control. They eliminate bridging on small extruders and offer a wide processing window.
