MILAN, ITALY — Cannon Group will supply a complete foaming plant to Maersk Container Industry (MCI) for the manufacture of reefers, temperature-controlled containers used to transport frozen or refrigerated goods.
Total investment in the project is $170 million, but Cannon did not specify if this was for the factory as a whole, or for its foaming plant.
The equipment will be installed in MCI's new factory in San Antonio, Chile. This will be the first reefer manufacturing facility in some time to be located outside China and the first in Latin America, Cannon said in an April 24 news release. Cannon added that most recent global reefer manufacturing capacity has been located in China, where MCI operates a plant in Qingdao.
The new plant is scheduled to open at the beginning of 2014. MCI said the new factory will help correct the reefer trade imbalance that disadvantages exporters of fresh produce, such as fish and meat from western South America.
The core of the plant will be a polyurethane injection plant, where all the foam-insulated components of the box reefer will be manufactured. It will be able to produce reefers at a rate of one complete box assembled every nine minutes, Cannon said.