Success story Packaging

A new coating plant in Brazil

Photo: The workforce at the Anápolis site will further expand with the entry into operation of the new coating facility.

Perlen Packaging’s Anápolis site in Brazil is being developed from a slitting plant into a full production facility for high-barrier films, the division’s third beside Switzerland and China. Despite coronavirus-related supply difficulties, the facility – which will be the most advanced in Latin America – should begin operations in mid‑2022.

Latin America and Brazil in particular are rapidly growing pharmaceutical markets. The Packaging Division has maintained its own slitting plant in Anápolis since 2018, and has reported double-digit growth rates since then for its Latin American business. In 2020 the CPH Group Board of Directors resolved to expand the existing Anápolis operation by installing a new coating plant. To date, the coated films used in the slitting facility have had to be imported from the Group’s Swiss and Chinese production facilities. Having a coating plant on-site will allow local and regional customers to be more promptly and more flexibly supplied.

“The logistics have been demanding all the way,” explains Cristiano Bueno, Managing Director of Perlen Packaging Anápolis Indústria e Comércio Ltda. “First we had the numerous restrictions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic; then we suffered shortages of the components needed to construct the new facility; and now it’s the limited transport capacities that are posing a particular challenge.” The 46-metre-long coating plant is being shipped to Brazil in some 40 containers.

The preparations in Anápolis were in full swing throughout 2021. The laboratory, the warehouse and offices were completed, and additional space was rented in the building to accommodate the new coating plant over a 4 000-square-metre area. “With our new Anápolis facility we are completing our expansion of Perlen Packaging into a global manufacturer of high-barrier films for the pharmaceutical industry, and are providing ourselves with the most advanced coating plant in Latin America,” concludes Wolfgang Grimm, Head of the Packaging Division.