Herma targets growth in film-based materials with new coating plant

Herma is to double its capacity for self-adhesive material production with a new coating plant at its Filderstadt headquarters, with the first test runs of coating technology and material handling scheduled to take place in summer 2019.

A visualization of the new Herma coating plant for self-adhesive materials

Herma managing director Dr Thomas Baumgärtner, who also heads the company’s self-adhesive materials division, commented: ‘The new plant will enable us to produce new self-adhesive materials, and particularly to extend our portfolio in the film-based materials sector, which is experiencing fast growth.’

The new coating plant consists of five building sections: a central warehouse for raw materials and semi-finished products; the coating machine hall with two production facilities; a two-floor wing with cutting and packaging systems on the upper level, and the shipping area below; a finished goods warehouse; and a social/technical building. Coating technology and material handling will be robot-assisted for the first time.

The complete building will be erected on 460 specialist concrete support pillars, sunk into the ground to a depth of more than 12 metres due to the ground conditions. The shell construction company had to create two casting segments for the reinforced concrete floor slab with a thickness of 1200mm that will house a new high bay warehouse for raw materials. Extremely dense, close-mesh reinforcement layers were used, as this area will have to be able to withstand loads exceeding 20 tons per square meter. This, in turn, forced the shell construction company to use different grain sizes for the gravel concrete aggregate, in order to prevent the reinforcement mesh from acting as a sieve that segregates the concrete. In total, this required the contents of 300 concrete mixer trucks. For logistical reasons, the 35m-high prefabricated pillars for the high bay warehouse were also delivered in two parts. The lower part of each pillar alone weighed nearly 40 tons. Framed by three high-rise construction cranes measuring up to 60m, specialist cranes inched the pillars into their massive, garage-sized sleeve foundations.

With the inauguration of the new coating plant, Herma will extend its production capacity for self-adhesive materials by 50 percent from 800 million sqm to 1.2 billion sqm, an area approximately the size of New York City.

Baumgärtner expects the outer structure to be finished in autumn 2018, and regular production to start in late 2019. Since an innovative energy concept is being implemented, the new building complex will be able to run its production fully independently from the existing Herma location. On the new Herma premises, the labeling machines production facility is currently also under construction. It is planned to go into operation towards the end of 2018, when this Herma division moves from its current location in Deizisau to Filderstadt.

By the end of 2019, Herma will have invested a total of approximately €100 million (US$81.5 million) in production facilities and buildings on the new premises.