Mineral wool packaging:
Isover - Saint-Gobain
Forssa, Finland
Isover’s production plant in Forssa is manufacturing mineral wool insulation for the building industry. During a long time, there had been considerations of modernizing the existing heat shrink packaging line.
Project manager at Isover Tuomas Rilla tells: ”We wanted to improve the working environment and the packaging quality to ensure that it is waterproof. Even if our products not will be damaged by moisture and water, the mineral wool must be 100% dry before it is put next to a vapour barrier in a building.” He adds: ”We also wanted the packaging to be more environmentally friendly and of course the appearance should be nice.”
Horizontal stretch hood packaging replaces heat shrink
Late 2017 a new packaging line was installed. The heat shrink packaging was replaced by horizontal stretch hood packaging. The solution was a RoRo StretchPack® Large D2 packaging machine from Tentoma. The machine is a Duplex version equipped with two gripper units. This provides a high packaging speed aligned with the rest of the production line. There are two films units installed at each gripper unit, which ensures that there is no production stop when a film roll is empty. Each film roll contains 6 km film - which gives a total film capacity on 24 km.
100% waterproof and significant savings
During spring 2018, the new packaging line was fully implemented. Tuomas Rilla concludes: ”Compared to earlier the packaging quality has improved significantly. Now we have a more uniformed and smooth packaging which also is 100% waterproof.” Besides this, the new packaging line has given the following savings:
- Reduction in film consumption on 50%
- Energy reduction on 165 MWh/year (=10 homes)
- Reduction in C02 emission on 30 tons/year
- Reduction in transport equivalent to
- 15 truckloads per year due to tighter packaging
- Better logistics in the production area because the new packaging line takes up less space than the heat shrink packaging line
