From the Sector

Just under a year ago, the EREMA Group started to repurpose the premises of Gruber & Kaja in St. Marien, which they took over as a reserve site in January 2021. In the meantime, a lot is going on there.

"When this site came up for sale, it only took us a few days to decide to buy the 40,000m² plot, including the workshop hall, which has an area of 15,000m²," says Manfred Hackl, CEO of EREMA Group GmbH. Around EUR 20 million was invested in the purchase, as the site offered the opportunity to increase production capacity by 60 percent in the immediate vicinity of the company headquarters in Ansfelden.

The fact that this site is now already being used so intensively was not envisaged at the time, because at the end of 2020 the company was just completing the expansion to their headquarters in Ansfelden, involving an investment of around EUR 17 million. 20 new jobs have already been created as a result, with a further 30 to follow in the next few months. By the time the new site is completed, the total number of new jobs will be up to 150.

This development is due to the high demand for the EREMA Group's plastics recycling technologies and the trend towards ever-larger recycling plants. "Just in December, we delivered a VACUREMA® system to Brazil that will produce up to 40,000 metric tonnes of recycled PET (rPET) per year. That is equivalent to recycling around 1.1 billion 1.5-litre PET bottles. This site provides the perfect conditions for building this scale of machine," says Hackl.

Markus Achleitner, Upper Austria's Minister for the Economy, was also impressed by this development during his visit to St. Marien. "There is hardly any other region in the world that focuses as closely on materials expertise and the circular economy as in Upper Austria. We want to fully exploit this potential with our #upperVISION2030 business and research strategy. EREMA is an important driver in this industry. It makes me all the more pleased that the company owners have once again confirmed their commitment to Upper Austria as a business location, to the circular economy and to the employees by developing this site," says Achleitner. "This investment is an important positive signal for the entire region of Upper Austria location, especially in the current challenging times, and all the more so for creating 150 jobs," he emphasises.

New site milestones
Since January 2021, part of the existing office and hall space at Kunststoffstraße 1, as the site's address is now called, has been occupied by companies and departments of the EREMA Group. UMAC GmbH, a subsidiary specialising in servicing and trading previously owned recycling machines, which was severely short of space at its main location in Styria, moved its entire production and administration to St. Marien. Large areas of hall storage space were adapted for both UMAC and EREMA GmbH. The paint shop was also relocated from Ansfelden to St. Marien, and another hall was equipped for building large-scale VACUREMA® systems - these are systems used all over the world to recycle PET bottles. Production in this workshop is now being ramped up step by step.
Space that is not being used in St. Marien over the medium-term will be rented out. An industry-related firm has already moved in, and another 300 m² of office space is currently still available.

As the demand for recycled plastics grows, so does the size of the machines. This applies to the processing of polyolefins as well as to PET recycling. With its unique dimensions and production capacity, this new size of plant features a screw diameter of 280 mm, implemented for the first time in a VACUREMA® Basic 2628 T large-scale project for producing rPET pellets. EREMA has just shipped the plant to a customer in Brazil.

Up to 40,000 tonnes per year of rPET meeting the highest quality standards can now be produced. "For this purpose, we installed a screw with a length of ten meters, a diameter of 280 millimetres and a weight of 3.5 tonnes, which is the largest ever used in one of our recycling machines," explains Managing Director Michael Heitzinger. The screw was manufactured by 3S, a subsidiary of EREMA GmbH. No less impressive is the reactor of this recycling system, which, with a height of around 10 metres, is also unique and almost reaches the roof of the new production hall. 500 tonnes of input material were recycled during the test phase, which was subject to strict quality control. "The entire project was a great team effort," Heitzinger said, thanking everyone involved.

EREMA as a partner for large-scale projects
Just four years ago, the largest extrusion line supplied by EREMA was designed for a throughput of 15,000 tonnes per year. This size of plant was ordered by customers once or twice a year. In the meantime, machines like this leave the production site in Ansfelden every month. As early as 2020, EREMA proved to be a pioneer and reliable partner for implementing unique large-scale projects. That was when the food and beverage packaging manufacturer Envases Universales Mexico commissioned two VACUREMA® Basic 2625 T machines, each with a screw diameter of 250 mm and a capacity of 30,000 tonnes per year.

Sateri has entered into agreement with Funing Aoyang Technology Co., Ltd. (Funing Aoyang) to acquire its viscose fibre business. The acquisition is part of Sateri’s growth strategy which will bring Sateri’s total number of viscose mills in China to six and total annual production capacity to more than 1.8 million tonnes.

Funing Aoyang is a subsidiary of listed company Jiangsu Aoyang Health Industry Co., Ltd. Its 330,000-tonne per annum mill that will be acquired by Sateri under the agreement, is located in Aoyang Industrial Park, Funing County, Jiangsu Province. Sateri is a member of the RGE group of companies; RGE manages a group of resource-based manufacturing companies with global operations spanning Indonesia, China, Brazil, Spain and Canada.

Allen Zhang, Sateri’s President, said: “This acquisition will boost Sateri’s market footprint and further strengthen our ability to serve customers in eastern and northern China. We will invest in advanced technologies to upgrade the mill so as to enhance its process technology, safety and environmental performance. Through better management and operational excellence, we hope to make a positive impact to the local economy and accelerate the sustainable development of the industry.”

The closing of the acquisition is subject to procedural approvals by relevant authorities.