Extrusion International USA 5-2021

46 Extrusion International 5/2021 FILM EXTRUSION The plant in Echte, with over 240 employees, is RKW’s centre of com- petence for industrial packaging. Research, development and produc- tion of the so-called FFS and ProVent sacks are located here. Other main- stays of production include valve box sacks, transport packaging and gar- bage bags. Powdery goods such as cement or other building materials, foodstuffs such as sugar, spices or salt, as well as various chemicals are packaged in quantities of mostly 15 to 25 kilograms in FFS bags and the ProVent developed in Echte. The new extrusion line will be used for the industrial packaging product group: “Wewant tooffer our custom- ers more sustainable packaging solu- tions for industrial packaging with new formulations. This includes, for example, a steadily growing propor- tion of recycled plastics in the pack- aging. State-of-the-art equipment like this enables us to do that,” says Site Director Markus Brinkmann. During development, RKW keeps the full product life cycle in mind. Accordingly, in addition to robust- ness and particularly high protection of the goods, the full recyclability of To ensure that overall energy require- ments are reduced, RKW is focusing on modernisation in production pro- cesses and on new, more ef fi cient machines and cooling systems with up-to-date measurement and con- trol technology. At the same time, more and more lighting systems in the factories are being converted to LED. RKW 2020 has invested around 650,000 euros in energy ef fi ciency measures of this kind alone. The commitment to climate protec- tion plays a major role in RKW’s sus- tainability strategy. But the company is also committed to socially relevant issues such as equality, diversity and inclusion. In July 2021, the owners, Board of Management and top man- agement signed the “Charta for Di- versity”. Sustainability is a task for society as a whole and it is fi rmly an- chored in the RKW Group. It also cre- ates potential for economic growth, as the investments at RKW in Echte underline. the fi lms is also very important. This is already ensured by the purity of the material; the fi lms produced are made exclusively of PE. In order to increase the reuse of recyclates with- out any loss of quality, innovative recipes have to be developed espe- cially for this fi ve-layer extrusion line. Older lines with only three extruders are severely limited in this respect. In addition to the increased use of recy- clates, the higher energy ef fi ciency of the plant and the lower produc- tion waste also contribute to the sus- tainability of production. RKW thus makes important contributions to a circular economy. Sustainability at all levels Sustainability plays a central role at RKW – and not only in the products. All of the group’s sites in Western Eu- rope use electricity exclusively fromre- newable energy sources. In an energy- intensive industry such as plastics, this switch saves a good 100,000 tonnes of CO 2 emissions per year, or around 60 per cent of RKW’s direct emissions worldwide compared to 2019.The other sites are also gradually being converted to green electricity. The RKWGroup is investing a seven- fi gure sum at its Echte, Germany site to produce plastic fi lms with a high recycled content in the future. At the same time, the company is expanding its production capacity in the area of industrial packaging, thus securing jobs in the region. The new fi ve- layer extrusion line is the latest of several investments at the Lower Saxony site RKW Group rkw-group.com New Five-Layer Extrusion Line Started Up – Seven-Figure Investment for More Recycling and Sustainability The RKW Group invests in a state-of-the-art fi ve-shift extrusion line for the production of industrial plastic packaging at its Echte, Germany site