W&&H forms joint venture with packing machinery maker Haver && Boecker

Windmöller & Hölscher KG has formed a joint venture with German packing machinery maker Haver & Boecker OHG.

The new joint company, Aventus GmbH & Co. KG, was formed June 11 as a 50-50 partnership and will specialize in filling technology for open bags, form-fill-seal bags and big bags as well as palletizing and load securing technology primarily for customers in the chemicals, food and animal feed markets.

In addition, Newtec Bag Palletizing SAS, a manufacturer of automatic palletizing systems in Illzach, France, is now a subsidiary of Aventus. The company was previously a subsidiary of Haver & Boecker.

Kai Lammers, who has worked at W&H for the last 16 years, has been appointed to managing director of Aventus. Most recently, he served as division manager of service sales at the film extrusion, printing and converting machinery maker's headquarters in Lengerich, Germany.

“There are a lot of drivers that brought us to the solution that this is a good idea,” Lammers said in a July 3 phone interview.

“We think there will be a lot of changes coming up to the whole industry of packaging, flexible packaging, driven by lots of mega trends,” he said, citing the projected growth of the world's population to around 10 billion people by 2050 as well as the impact of Industry 4.0.

As part of the two parent companies, Aventus has “access to the experience, knowledge and technology of both houses,” he explained. This includes film extrusion for form-fill-seal bags from W&H as well as loading automation equipment and storage solutions from Haver and Boecker, he added.

Aventus is still in a startup phase now through 2019, Lammers said, but is expected to grow to more than 300 employees, including specialists from W&H and Haver & Boecker. He estimates the company will reach annual sales of approximately 80 million euros ($93.5 million) once it reaches full production.

For comparison, W&H reported an estimated 835 million euros ($976 million) in sales for 2017. Haver & Boecker reported an estimated 490 million euros ($573 million), Lammers said.

“We will have a calm start, focusing our energy on sales and having all of the other functions in our mother companies,” Lammers said. “And then, one after the other, we will set up our own support departments — design, purchasing and so on.”

Production at its Münsterland, Germany, headquarters is expected to start in 2020. Aventus will share a second production site with Newtec in Alsace, France.

“Our goal is that our customers reach their goals, and we think that in the partnership [with Haver & Boecker] we can achieve it,” Lammers said.

In other news, W&H also announced it had joined Ceflex, a European recycling initiative made up of companies and organizations representing the entire flexible packaging value chain.

The group's aim is to look at the entire life cycle of flexible packaging — from production, consumption and collection to waste management and secondary raw materials — to improve its contribution to the circular economy.

This includes a 2020 goal of increasing the recyclability of flexible packaging across Europe and a 2025 goal of having an established collection, sorting and reprocessing infrastructure in place for post-consumer flexible packaging.

“Ceflex is an important step toward combining expertise in this area and working together to find circular economy solutions for flexible packaging,” W&H CEO Jürgen Vutz said in a statement.

“As the world market leader for machines for manufacturing flexible packaging, we can make an important contribution to the technological advancement,” he said.

W&H joins more than 70 other companies and organizations already a part of the initiative, including consumer products manufacturer Procter & Gamble Co. and chemical giant BASF SE.