Uflex Group’s Dubai plant at the Jebel Ali Free Zone
India-based international group Uflex, which has two Middle East plants in the UAE and Egypt, is in the thick of expansions at its Egyptian facility while building capacity at other sites and creating new greenfield plants in Europe and North America. Uflex said the company would raise output capacity of its biaxially oriented polyester (Bopet) film by 40 per cent within months. Bopet production capacity will rise to 210,000 tonnes annually after the capacity upgrades, said Uflex Ltd’s chief executive for the global films business Pradeep Tyle. Uflex also produces 70,000 tonnes of biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) film, which is up to capacity, and 17,000 tonnes of cast polypropylene film, close to capacity. The Egyptian plant, located in Sixth of October City, near Cairo, was commissioned in 2010, and is currently undergoing commissioning of its second phase. The first phase has a line with capacity of 35,000 tonnes per year of BOPP film plus a plasma-enhanced vacuum metalliser and the second phase yields 12,000 tonnes of cast polypropylene film. The plant will see another wave of production-enhancing activity. 'The third phase of this project involves the setting up of a 36,000 tonnes per year line for Bopet film and another metalliser by the end of 2011,' said Tyle. Bopet, BOPP and CPP film are all premium substrates used for flexible packaging applications. The plant goes by the name of Flex P Films (Egypt) SAE. First overseas operation The Dubai plant, located at the Jebel Ali Free Zone, was the group’s first overseas operation and was commissioned in 2005. The Dubai factory has two lines for the manufacture of high-tech Bopet film and a plasma-enhanced vacuum metalliser for producing high-barrier packaging film. The plant has been operating at full capacity (60,000 tonnes per year) for the past three years and most output is exported to advanced film markets in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and Asia. Tyle said there were no plans for the moment to expand production capacity in Dubai. Uflex’s Dubai facility operates as Flex Middle East FZE As well as having plants in Dubai, Egypt and several sites in India, Uflex has a factory in Mexico. New greenfield manufacturing facilities will be operational in Poland in mid-2012 and in the US by the end of that year. The company also plans to double its Mexican manufacturing capacity. 'We have more international plants on the anvil,' said Tyle. 'We are one of the world’s largest manufacturers of high-tech flexible packaging materials and the largest supplier of Bopet films for packaging applications,' claimed Tyle. The Uflex Group, whose revenues were $910 million in 2010, is a fully vertically integrated flexible packaging conglomerate with products including plain and metallised film, flexible packaging laminates, bags and pouches, polyester resins, holographic materials, printing inks and coatings, adhesives, rotogravure cylinders, flexographic plates, packaging machinery and converting machinery. Tyle said nearly all Uflex plants were certified to ISO 9001 and 14001 and to the norms of the food industry’s control system HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) with customers including many leading international brand owners and flexible packaging convertors worldwide The official said locating plants as close as possible to major markets was one of Uflex’s core policies. 'This is why we have decided to commission two new plants, one each in Poland and the US in addition to doubling our film capacity in Mexico,' he said. 'By 2012 we will become the only global packaging film manufacturer to have large plants located on all four major continents that constitute the largest film markets.' Tyle says the growth of flexible packaging in the Middle East has been quite healthy and projected further at 7 to 8 per cent per year, higher than the average global growth of about 5 per cent. Innovations Uflex innovations include a green PET film with 30 per cent of its content being an ingredient obtained from renewable plant sources. The film meets all FDA and EU norms for food contact and performs as well as traditional Bopet film, the company says. Another innovation involves the manufacture of rPET film, which contains post-consumer recyclate PET resin sourced from post-consumer waste such as used PET bottles that would otherwise have been confined to landfills. This film is also approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the EU for food contact and has properties equivalent to traditional films produced from 100 per cent virgin resin. Uflex also developed an antistatic twistable PET film, which complies with the FDA and EU for food contact. It was developed for highly exacting twist wrapping of products such as confectionery and candies. It is available as high transparency or metallised film with zero memory and retains twist perfectly. It devivers up to 50 per cent higher packaging speeds than cellophane and more than double those obtained from PVC film. The company says it has developed a direct embossable PET film produced with a special surface layer that can be embossed directly without any offline coating, an expensive process. The embossing can be carried out at lower temperatures and leaves deep and sharp impressions. The surface can be metallised with excellent metal adhesion and is ideal for holographic applications. Other innovations that the company lists are special heatsealable film, liquid packaging PET film, high-clarity PET film, low-slip PET film, white PPET film, extrusion coatable BOPP film and retortable CPP film. Uflex, India’s largest company in the flexible packaging business, is registered in New Delhi and has its corporate office at Noida, in nearby UP state. It is a public limited company promoted by first-generation entrepreneur Ashok Chaturvedi.
