Windmöller & Hölscher KG will get more involved in flexible packaging machinery through its bigger stake in machinery maker BSW Machinery Handels-GmbH.
W&H has bought out BSW Machinery founders to increase its majority stake in BSW. Coincident with the ownership change, BSW has appointed a plastics industry veteran, Walter Häder, as CEO of BSW.
BSW provides equipment to make stretched polypropylene woven fabrics and woven sacks. W&H makes complementary machinery such as tape extruders and coating machinery as well as its Convertex system, which produces hot-air sealed PP woven sacks.
“With W&H's larger percent ownership, BSW will be more deeply integrated into the W&H structure allowing for a stronger international foothold,” W&H of Lengerich, Germany, noted in a January announcement some six months after the W&H share purchase.
Häder was recently CEO of Cincinnati Extrusion of Vienna, Austria.
“With Walter Häder, we have won an internationally experienced industry veteran, who has led and developed successful companies,” noted W&H Chairman Jürgen Vutz in a news release.
W&H bought BSW shares owned by BSW founders Thomas Breitenberger, Peter Schmalzholz and Günter Wais in August.
W&H produces blown and cast film equipment, flexographic and gravure printing presses, machines for surface finishing and processing of paper, films and woven plastic fabrics, and form-fill-seal packaging systems.
BSW, established in 2005, makes woven PP machinery in Vienna and in Prostejov, Czech Republic. W&H has held a majority stake in the company since 2005. BSW's other product lines include equipment for tape stretching, circular looms, extrusion coating and sack production.