Cosmo Films strengthens its export with a new plant

Cosmo Films, the largest bi-axially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) film exporter from India, has opened its third plant in Shendra, a greenfield site in the Special Economic Zone in Aurangabad, writes Aakriti Agarwal.

Cosmo Films' new plant in Aurangabad, India

The plant spread across an area of 19 acres has been built with a total investment of 40 million USD to cater primarily to the export market. Pankaj Poddar, CEO at Cosmo Films, said, ‘The BOPP market has high growth prospects and it is currently growing at four to five percent globally with a consumption of 6.5 million tons to 7 million tons worldwide.’ Though the company supplies material to more than 100 countries worldwide the focus for now will be USA and European markets. ‘We are expanding our sales and distribution network all around the world to be close to our customer,’ he said.

The new plant houses one BOPP line and three extrusion coating lines. By the end of 2014, one more extrusion coating line, one gravure coating line and one metallizer will be installed in the new facility. The current production capacity of BOPP in this plant is 40,000 tons a year and the capacity of three extrusion coating lines is 800 to 850 tons a month which translates to about 10,000 tons a year.

Cosmo Films is looking at further expanding the current infrastructure and is exploring opportunities within and outside India to grow manufacturing base. Talking of the Indian market, Poddar said, ‘The domestic market for BOPP is growing at a phenomenal rate of 12 to 15 percent with total consumption of 3,00,000 tons to 3,50,000 tons.’ Cosmo Films also has a strong portfolio in labels as well. The company has a three star rating from HP Indigo for its HPI (DP) product.

See Labels & Labeling issue #4 for more