Machinery for innovative woven plastic packaging from Starlinger

During Chinaplas in April 2018, Starlinger welcomed more than 600 international visitors, and about 200 guests also attended the company's open house in Taicang. The machinery demonstrations were met with great interest: high-tech weaving on circular looms type RX, consistently high coating quality and roll change at production speed on the lamiTEC LX, and precise sack conversion on the ad*starKON.

Starlinger Open House at Starlinger Plastics Machinery in Taicang. ©Starlinger

The Starlinger factory in Taicang near Shanghai was founded in 2005 to satisfy the growing demand of the Asian market. In addition to serving regional customers, the factory produces a wide range of circular looms on site. These circular looms weave plastic tapes into fabric that is then coated or laminated and converted into sacks. At Chinaplas, Starlinger exhibited the RX 6.0 for lightweight fabric with a working width of 300 – 850 mm double flat; at the open house, the models RX 6.1 (for 850 – 1300 mm) and RX 8.0 II for high performance fabric were shown in operation. High performance fabric is mainly used for applications such as FIBCs, tarpaulins, geo- and agrotextiles.

The open house also featured live demonstrations of the coating line lamiTEC LX – including a fully automatic roll change at production speed – and the conversion line ad*starKON, which turns fabric into the well-known AD*STAR block bottom valve sacks for free flowing bulk goods such as cement or fertilizer. Optionally, a microperforation unit creates tiny holes for efficient aeration of the sacks. During filling, these holes allow the excess air to escape, while the content stays safely inside the sack. Today, more than 10 billion AD*STAR sacks are produced on Starlinger lines in more than 150 production plants every year.

Visitors of the open house were mostly from Southeast Asia, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and South America. Already during the fair, companies invested in machinery for new sack projects, for a capacity extension, or for replacement of existing equipment. At the factory in Taicang, Starlinger offers comprehensive technical trainings, machinery demonstrations as well as product tests for customers.