An Italian maker of rewinders, slitters and palletizing equipment for the stretch film industry now is selling its coreless system for stretch film that eliminates the need for the cardboard core.
The Milan-based company is NO.EL Automazione Industustriale. The technology behind the Coreless Rewinder II is patented.
The current model is designed for use off-line, but NO.EL expects to introduce an on-line winder in Europe and North America in late 2008 or early 2009. The first customer to use an on-line Coreless Rewinder II will be cast film maker Hipac SpA of Milan.
Officials said initially most coreless demand came from rolls designed for manual wrapping, where the film rolls have a 2-inch diameter. But about half of new orders are coming from larger rolls, with a 3-inch-interior diameter and a total weight of 25-35 pounds.
The cost of the cardboard tubes adds up. According to NO.EL, in North America the average cost for a tube is $1.
The tubes cannot be used again for the stretch film rolls, said Roberto Colombo, vice president and NO.EL's sales manager for the world market. Generally in Europe, about half the cardboard tubes are recycled and the other half are thrown away, he said.
“During the [winding] process, it damages the cardboard,” Colombo said.
The Coreless Rewinder II has been available only in Europe and Brazil. NO.EL introduced it into the U.S. market in the second quarter of this year.
One of the first customers for the Coreless Rewinder II was BPI Films, the Greenock, Scotland-based unit of British Polythene Industries plc of Greenock.
BPI Films uses the coreless rewinder for its manual-wrap brand of Zeroll stretch wrap. Operations director Tony Solle put some numbers on it.
BPI places 360 of the small rolls on a pallet. Eliminating the cardboard core shaves off about 180 pounds of weight from every pallet.
The film maker also can fit many more rolls of Zeroll on a pallet. Before going coreless, only 240 rolls would fit on a single pallet, Solle said.
NO.EL's exclusive agent for North America is Nuove Sales LLC in Los Angeles.
Tel. 310-670-0576, ext. 1, e-mail [email protected]
