Essel Propack adds fifth plant in China, expands in Egypt

Plastics packaging manufacturer Essel Propack Ltd. has launched a new plant in Suzhou in East China.

The 5,000-square-meter (53,820-square-foot) new construction is located in Changshu, with a designed initial annual capacity of 160 million tubes, the company said in a release. The second phase is scheduled to go on stream in 2016, boosting the total capacity to 380 million tubes.

Essel Propack said both global and Chinese cosmetic brands have grown to favor the use of laminated plastic tubes, known for its advantages in sheet materials, printing, barrier properties, anti-counterfeiting technology and fast response time through integrated automatic production.

The Suzhou plant is expected to help better serve customers in East China, a region with heavy concentration of global OEMs such as GlaxoSmithKline, Unilever, L'oreal, Johnson & Johnson and Beiersdorf as well as Chinese brands.

Building upon its success with global cosmetics makers, the company said it has high hopes for China, which has become the world's second largest cosmetics market.

The new facility marks the completion of the firm's most important strategic deployment in China, it added. Essel Propack opened its first China factory in Guangzhou in 1997, added a site in Hefei in 2002, launched the Tianjin plant in 2009, and expanded into a second Guangzhou facility in 2010.

With the latest Suzhou site, its production network now covers north, south, central, and east regions of China.

Essel Propack, a division of the $2.4 billion Essel Group, has annual sales of $350 million.

It makes more than 6 billion laminated and extruded plastic tubes every year and employs 2,500 at 25 global plants in 12 countries, including the U.S., Mexico, Columbia, Poland, Germany, Egypt, Russia, China, the Philippines, Indonesia and India.

The Mumbai-based company claims a third of the global market of oral care product tube packaging.

In a Dec. 31 release, Essel Propack announced a global rollout of new logos, highlighting its five primary markets: beauty and cosmetics, pharmaceutical and health, food, oral, and home.

The company is also expanding in Egypt by adding a new machine to make laminated plastic tubes as customers turn away from jars and extruded plastic tubes, Indian media reports said.