Ravago SA has had a busy 2007 - opening a new headquarters and central warehouse in Belgium and increasing thermoplastic elastomer capacity in Turkey.
Arendonk, Belgium-based Ravago - a major global plastic/rubber distributor and plastic compounder - opened a new headquarters building there in September. More than 200 global companies now are managed from the new HQ site, Ravago officials said in promotional material distributed at K 2007.
In Lommel, Belgium, 122,000-square-foot central warehouse was opened earlier this year. A second phase could add another 109,000 square feet to the site, which will handle almost 70 million pounds of plastic and rubber raw materials each month. One of the aims of the warehouse is ``to bring fragmented quantities of material from many small warehouses under one roof,'' officials said.
Full truckloads of material from suppliers will enter the warehouse, with combined shipments leaving to local warehouses abroad or directly to customers.
In Kocaeli, Turkey, Ravago has increased TPE capacity by an undisclosed amount. Production of TPEs - including thermoplastic vulcanizates and styrenic block copolymers - in Kocaeli and in Steinfurt, Germany, now totals almost 60 million pounds annually.
Officials said that Ravago also has completed its 2006 acquisition of Muehlstein Holding Corp., an international distributor and compounder based in Norwalk, Conn. The combined company now employs 4,000 and annually distributes almost 8 billion pounds of plastics and rubber valued at more than $6 billion.
Ravago's annual sales are estimated at more than $2 billion. The firm also operates compounding and recycling businesses, and distributes finished products such as pipe and sheet. Its European distribution units include Ultrapolymers and Resin Express.
