Progroup is continuing its growth strategy by starting the construction of PW14 corrugated sheet feeder plant in Poland. The company’s twelfth production facility for corrugated sheets (and its third plant in Poland), is being constructed on the site of the existing PW07 plant in Stryków.
Over an area of around 27,900 sqm, Progroup will once again be setting new benchmarks for productivity and sustainability in the industry. The company is investing around €72m in a production facility which is geared towards sustainability. Among other things a combined cooling, heat and power (CCH,P) plant will be used to generate power. The new plant is set to produce up to 200,000 tonnes of corrugated sheet annually from the fourth quarter of 2022. With its production capacity of 825m sqm per annum, Stryków will be one of the biggest corrugated board production sites anywhere in the world.
“With this new plant, Progroup will not only boost Stryków as a location, but at the same time it will expand its position in the market in Central & Eastern Europe,” says Jürgen Heindl, Chief Executive Officer of Progroup. “We are consistently following our growth strategy and this will allow us to continue to offer our customers the high reliability of supply and impressive quality of product that they are used to.”
The plant will provide 50 jobs. Efficient filter systems will deliver a largely dust-free working environment and an innovative sound insulation system will ensure a pleasant atmosphere to work in.
PW14 will manufacture virtually all common grades of corrugated board. The production speed will be 400m per min and the BHS Corrugated line will have a working width of 3.35m. The production line is designed to produce single wall and doublewall Next Board® corrugated sheets in B, C and E flutes and smaller grammages in all combinations.
In the final expansion stage, production in Stryków will have one of the highest levels of automation in the industry. The employees will receive the operating data for the machine and work instructions live on wearables that resemble smartwatches or will receive the information via a headset.
A 32m-high, fully automated high-bay warehouse with more than 14,000 storage spaces and four automatic storage and retrieval machines will ensure smooth distribution. It will be able to store up to two days of corrugated sheet production.
Progroup’s development as a company has a long-term basis and is planned in strategic periods of ten years at a time. The aim for the current period is to double the size of the company by 2025 compared to 2015. This involves the construction of a total of eight sheetfeeder plants, a CHP power plant and the PM3 paper factory. “Increasing our paper capacities with the addition of PM3 means that we can continue to offer the reliability of a stable raw material supply. We can thus remain a strong and reliable partner to our paper and corrugated board customers,” concludes Heindl.
Over the period more than 500 new jobs will be created. The total level of investment for these growth projects by Progroup is around €1.35bn.
