Sigma Plastics Group has purchased its fourth Varex high-output blown film line from Windmoeller & Hoelscher Corp. for its FlexSol Packaging Corp. subsidiary.
The 87-inch-wide, five-layer line will be installed at FlexSol's Nashville, Tenn., plant and is intended to make coextruded film for food packaging, according to a July 26 news release.
“W&H machinery performs extraordinarily well for our product lines and we intend to continue growing with W&H,” Alfred Teo Sr., chairman and CEO of Sigma, said in the release.
The line is equipped with a stacked Multicool D air ring and Filmatic TX dual-turret winder. It is scheduled to go into operation in the fourth quarter of 2011.
FlexSol is headquartered in Pompano Beach, Fla.
Lyndhurst, N.J.-based Sigma has installed more than 20 W&H lines at its subsidiaries in the past year. Five Varex lines have been installed at two companies:
* ISO Poly Films Inc. in Gray Court, S.C., added a seven-layer line with an 87-inch width, as well as two three-layer lines with widths of 110 and 126 inches; and one 63-inch, five-layer line.
* Clinton, Miss.-based McNeely Plastics boosted its production with a 71-inch, three-layer W&H line.
Recently, another Sigma subsidiary, Lyndhurst-based Sigma Stretch Film, bought a blown film line from Davis-Standard LLC for its plant in Shelbyville, Ky.
In a July 28 telephone call, Teo disclosed that Sigma Stretch Film in 2009 installed two Davis-Standard film lines, one blown and one cast, at its plant in Tulsa, Okla.
Those pieces of machinery joined a Gloucester cast film line, two Gloucester blown film lines, and an Egan blown film line, at the Tulsa plant, according to Per Nylen, executive vice president of Sigma Stretch Film.
Sigma ranked second among North American film and sheet manufacturers in Plastics News' most recent survey. PN estimates the firm's film and sheet sales for its fiscal year ended Oct. 31 at about $2.5 billion. The group employs 5,000 at 36 plants.
