Chicago — PET film maker Polyplex USA LLC is putting the finishing touches on a $100 million expansion.
The Decatur, Ala.-based company has installed a second PET film line as well as a separate coating line that will allow the company to make specialty films at the location for the first time.
Polyplex USA is part of Polyplex (Thailand) Public Co. Ltd., one of the largest PET film manufacturers in the world. And the capacity expansion will only make the company bigger.
Jerrie Hyman, business development manager for Polyplex USA, laid out details of the project during a Nov. 5 interview on the Pack Expo 2024 floor in Chicago.
"Currently we have one line in Decatur, Ala., and we produce approximately 70 million pounds of PET film a year. The expansion is a second line. It's going to add 110 million pounds of PET capacity, so the total will be at 180 million pounds of PET film being produced domestically in Alabama. We're also adding an offline coater.
"The PET line is going to be a three-layer line. It's going to be 420 inches wide, and it's going to run 2,100 feet per minute. The offline coater is going to be 96 inch," Hyman said. "It's going to have a capacity of 8 million pounds a year, and it will run 1,000 feet a minute."
The coater allows Polyplex to create specialty PET films for the first time in the United States, products that have been imported by the company.
Polyplex has an uncommon manufacturing process in the film business, Hyman said, as each of the company's plants also produce PET resin onsite. That resin is then used to make the company's films. The company's original design in Decatur provided enough PET making capacity to provide resin for a second line, Hyman explained.
"We have a reactor onsite at every manufacturing plant and make our own resin," she said. "That is very unique. That's something that distinguishes us from our competitors."
Polyplex expects to hire an additional 80 to 100 workers thanks to the new construction, and they will join the current workforce of 189.
Construction began about two years ago, and the machinery will be operational during the first quarter of next year. "When we built the original plant, the plan was always to have a second line," Hyman said.
Polyplex has been making film in Alabama for more than a decade. Other company film sites are in India, Turkey, Thailand and Indonesia.