Tredegar Corp.'s Terphane business unit will spend $80 million to increase production capacity for biaxially oriented polyester (BOPET) film at its plant in Pernambuco, Brazil.
Terphane will add about 66 million pounds of annual BOPET film capacity at the site, bringing its total to almost 155 million pounds. Metallization capacity at the site also will be doubled to about 22 million pounds per year.
The investment will include a new film production line — to be commissioned in the first quarter of 2014 — as well as investments in infrastructure at the site. A new metallizer was installed there in late 2013.
In a Jan. 17 news release, officials said the expansion was being done “to expand [Terphane's] products and services to best meet the dynamic needs of its global customers.”
Terphane makes a broad range of advanced and specialty films mainly used in flexible packaging. Typical applications for its film products are pouches and packets for dehydrated foods, barrier films for fresh meats and cheeses and lidding films for frozen and refrigerated foods.
The unit also operates a polymerization plant where it makes most of the PET used on its extrusion lines.
Terphane is based in Bloomfield, N.Y. Tredegar — based in Richmond, Va. — ranked as North America's 12th-largest film and sheet maker in a recent Plastics News ranking with related annual sales of more than $600 million.
