Cosmo Films inaugurates its ninth BOPP film line, doubles production capacity

Cosmo Films is one of the world's largest producers of BOPP and thermal laminating films with operations in three locations in India, as well as in South Korea and in the United States. In the last week of August this year, the company inaugurated its 9th BOPP film production line on a new greenfield site in the Special Economic Zone in Shendra, close to Aurangabad in India, approximately 450kms north east of Mumbai.

17 Dec 2013 | By Supreeth Sudhakaran

Atlas has commissioned two slitter rewinders in conjunction with this latest huge investment project - one 8.7m wide Atlas CW984AP primary film slitter at the end of the film line and a 2.8m wide Atlas CW800 secondary film slitter for processing narrower widths of BOPP film. Both machines will be running at speeds of up to 1000 m/min.

The new, high speed film line is 8.7m wide and is expected to produce up to 45,000 tonnes of BOPP film per year. The line will be processing thinner gauge films particularly used for lamination in flexible packaging applications. Both Atlas slitter rewinders feature an unwind splice table for high quality splicing and the CW984 primary slitter is working with a slit roll conveyor system to transport the rolls to both the Atlas CW800 secondary slitter and the packing/storage facility.

"We are very pleased with the quick installation and commissioning of the two new film slitters which was carried out by the Atlas Service team based in India," commented Sanjay Chincholekar, vice president of sales, marketing and projects at Cosmo Films.

"We are also pleased to be working in collaboration with Atlas again for our new film line. We now have 12 Atlas film slitters operating in several locations, some of which have been in service for more than 25 years," confirmed Chincholekar.

During Labelexpo Europe, Tanuj Agarwal, senior vice president for international operation, sales and marketing at Cosmo Films had informed PrintWeek India that the investment in the ninth line is to double the production capacity of its existing unit.

Cosmo Films has its corporate head office in New Delhi and commenced production of BOPP film 33 years ago with the start-up of its first film line in Aurangabad in 1981. Five more BOPP film lines were added over the following 20 years at this site and in 2002 it acquired Gujarat Propack with 2 more film lines.

In the last 10 years the company has expanded its operations to include several extrusion coating lines and vacuum metallizing of various film substrates. In 2011, the company established a new manufacturing plant in South Korea, in addition to its US operations. Since 2008, Cosmo Films has focused on the development of various types of coated film and is now amongst the top five coated film suppliers in the world.

In 2013-14, Cosmo Films will produce 1,50,000 tonnes of BOPP film, 40,000 tonnes of thermal film, 20,000 tonnes of coated film and 8,000 tonnes of metallized film which makes it one of the world's largest producers of plastic film, supplying customers in over 100 countries.

The company plans to enter other Asian markets such as China in the next few months as it believes that although India might be growing but it is not very big in the label market. “China is the largest market in PS Label market in the world and comparison with them is not fair. India has just started evaluating the PS label market and it is a very small market compared to China and other regions. The wet glue label and the filmic labels are two different markets, and we do not foresee customers switching from one to another. Both markets will co-exist,” Agarwal added.