Polyethylene blown film extruder Polykar Industries Inc. will add coextrusion to its capabilities in the Montreal suburb of Saint-Laurent.
Polykar said it will invest C$8 million (US$7.4 million at exchange of 0.93) to expand its floor space by 40 percent to 105,000 square feet. It will install a Windmoeller & Hoelscher three-layer blown film line and start it up by the end of the year.
“Our customers are asking us to get into more complex films,” said Amir Karim, Polykar's vice president of business development, in a phone interview. “This follows our success in selling monolayer films.”
The expansion also entails hiking productivity in making trash bags, Polykar's main business, especially for certified compostable bags. Funds will also be directed to increase the sources of scrap PE film for conversion to film and bags. Polykar now recycles post-industrial PE film and wants to access and use commercial and institutional scrap film.
Among the new markets the coextrusion line will open are specialty food packaging made by outside converters, Karim said. The company has been supplying PE film to the food sector for bulk packaging.
Polykar, owned by the Karim family, is a major Canadian supplier of compostable trash bags with recycled content. It sells trash bags to industrial, institutional and commercial markets but not to consumers through retail outlets. It has been using high quality reprocessed PE film since 2009. Karim said his firm will not need to install washing equipment to use scrap commercial/institutional film because the main contaminants are labels which Polykar can separate.
Karim said the expansion will create about 15 jobs, ten of which will be on the manufacturing side.
The 27-year-old company has annual sales of about C$30 million (US$27.9 million) and more than 80 employees. It boasts its manufacturing facility and office carry silver certification under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program.
