Tekni-Plex invests over $10M in Holland

Supplier opening new production line in 2017 Q4

Tekni-Plex, a globally-integrated company focused on developing and manufacturing innovative medical compounds, precision-crafted tubing, and packaging solutions, has invested over $10 million during the past two years in its Holland-based facilities, Tekni-Films and the Global Technology Center (GTC). Tekni-Films and the GTC are a combined 70,000 square feet, and have received significant investment to expand their product manufacturing lines and research and development operations.

Tekni-Plex first announced in 2011 that it was opening its GTC in Holland. The facility was built to help maximize and expedite the company’s product development on behalf of its healthcare, food and beverage, consumer, and specialty products markets around the world. According to Tekni-Plex, the GTC served as a commitment to long-term development of new technologies and research into new markets and products.

“The site provides our company the increased freedom to innovate at the business unit level and allows us to focus on enhancing our product lines while also creating new ones,” said Phil Bourgeois, Ph.D., senior vice president of global technology and regulatory affairs.

In 2015, the company then decided to invest in a new production line for Tekni-Films, a division of the company, adjacent to the GTC.

The Tekni-Films division has 60 employees in Holland, adding 15 in the last year, and has been modernized to fit the needs of its customers.

Joe Horn, senior vice president and general manager, Tekni-Films, said “We have modernized our operations with this facility as our customers demand state-of-the-art, modern, high quality, efficient production facilities that meet current cGMP and ISO standards. We continue to add production capacity for polymer film products to serve our pharmaceutical, medical device, and food industry customers.”

Tekni-Films continues to develop and produce monolayer, coextruded, laminated, and coated barrier structures that are used for thermoformable blister packaging, IV bags, and medical trays. According to Tekni-Films, it recently installed a copolyester sheet line. The line produces proprietary sheet as an alternative to PETG for thermoformed medical trays and other applications. The line produces sheet thicknesses from 5 to 60 millimeters. The latest production line is due to begin production in the fourth quarter of 2017, according to Horn.

Tekni-Films’ capabilities include high-speed manufacturing equipment, vision systems, and other quality control upgrades. These conform to cGMP and ISO standards, which will help customers meet their productivity and regulatory requirements.

The company’s production capability complements its global network of existing laminated barrier film manufacturing capabilities located in Erembodegem, Belgium and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Its location, adjacent to the company’s GTC, places it in an ideal location to transfer new technology and pilot production over to commercialization, according to Tekni-Films.

Bourgeois said, “We are a very technical, material science-driven company, and as we develop and get into new product lines, the genesis of those developments and the implementations of the early stage of those developments are happening at the Global Technology Center, not only with Tekni-Films, but for all the business units as well.”

At the GTC, 20 development / process engineers and laboratory technicians help form the technology backbone for all business units.

“We participate in meetings with customers and strategic suppliers, manage the company’s intellectual property, and ensure Tekni-Plex’s global regulatory compliance—which is crucial, since more than half of our products go into markets that are regulated by one government agency or another,” said Bourgeois. “We handle a lot of different projects in Holland. And these projects are driven by customers or to meet specific market needs of one of our six businesses.

“A lot of it’s a collaboration from a lot of folks up and down the line so that we’re offering technical advantages that fit the marketplace cost-structures that are out there today. We never want to come up with a technical solution to something that becomes a marketplace failure. So the market and technology knowledge really go hand-in-hand, and we’ve been successful in marrying up those two approaches, if you will, that become part of our ‘Tekni-Way’ or ‘Tekni method of development’,” said Bourgeois.

Tekni-Plex is headquartered in Wayne, Pennsylvania, with 2,600 employees, 30 manufacturing plants, 13 of them ISO certified, and eight ISO Class 8 cleanrooms. The company, with $672 million in annual sales, has six divisions, including Tekni-Films, Colorite, Navtar, Tri-Seal, Action Technology, and Dolco Packaging, along with the GTC.

“Our vision is to be a trusted global partner for our customers,” Horn said “We want to be recognized as a leader in creating and commercializing new materials, technologies, and products utilizing our network of highly efficient facilities around the world. We also want to be seen as an employer of choice for people who value safe, collaborative, challenging, and rewarding work.”

Bourgeois added: “It’s important that we continue to focus on innovation by providing world-class materials science, advanced development, and superior engineering and processing capabilities. Continuous investment in R&D and a determined focus on innovation has helped us develop smarter, safer packaging, dispensing, and tubing products and technologies. We guide our customers through material selection. As their needs evolve, we can create novel solutions to meet them.”