Prowell is expanding again, with another corrugated sheet feeder plant in Germany. In order to be able to successfully cater for the continuing growth in the market and customer demands for reliable deliveries and quality products, what is now the eleventh corrugated sheet feeder plant is being constructed in Eisfeld, Thuringia.
Thanks to this new, state-of-the-art production site with an annual capacity of 140,000 tonnes of corrugated sheet board, Progroup’s total capacity will increase to 1.5 million tonnes. The total level of investment for the project is around €50 million. Operating in four shifts, the plant will create a total of 52 new jobs and three apprenticeships.
With the new corrugated sheet feeder plant in Eisfeld, Progroup is pursuing its Two Twenty-five strategy and continuing to expand at a great pace. The announcement of this new corrugated sheet feeder demonstrates once again that Progroup is one of the fastest growing manufacturers of containerboard and corrugated sheet board in Europe – it was only at the start of August that Progroup broke ground to herald the start of the project for another paper mill with a total investment of €375 million. The eleven corrugated sheet feeder plants that will operate in Germany, France, the Czech Republic, Poland, Great Britain and Italy will process 85% of the containerboard manufactured in the company’s own paper mills. This will see Progroup continue to expand its position in the market for corrugated sheet board in Central Europe.
The new corrugated plant is being constructed on a plot of land covering around 87,000 sqm. Production is scheduled to start in the fourth quarter of 2019. The plant will be equipped with the same technical innovations that will already have been deployed from November 2018 at the new mega plant in Ellesmere Port, Great Britain.
Industry 4.0
Jürgen Heindl, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Progroup AG, explains, “Our plants, which are optimised for Industry 4.0, follow the approach of production lines, which in automatic mode, operate optimally largely on their own and report any deficiencies in production and the plant autonomously.”
The key innovations include the one-man dry-end concept, a highly efficient high-bay warehouse with 11,000 storage spaces and three storage and retrieval machines, the automatic handling of pallets, edge protection and strapping as well as the optimisation of waste disposal and the starch system. The corrugator will be equipped to operate at a speed of up to 400 m/min and with a working width of 2.8m, will blend seamlessly into the Progroup mill system. Single-wall and double-wall ‘Next Board®’ grades of B, C, E and resulting combinations will be produced.
The use of a CHP (combined heat and power) plant for producing electricity and heat will take account of Progroup’s Green Hightech philosophy. The waste heat from electricity production is used to generate cold by employing an absorption process or is used directly for heating purposes.
“As well as using the CHP plant, we will also achieve a maximum level of environmental efficiency by producing our Next Board® corrugated sheets, involving less use of energy and raw materials as well as lower CO2 emissions coupled with increased performance,” explains Heindl.
The innovations at the state-of-the-art plant will be completed with a sound insulation system, which will ensure a low level of noise pollution on the one hand and low temperature fluctuations on the other. This will provide an ideal basis for a pleasant and modern working environment.
