Jindal adds on technical capabilities; turns to trigeneration to save energy

India-headquartered Jindal Films, the world’s largest BOPP and BOPET film producer, has added on capability additions in Belgium and North America (La Grange, GA). The two complementary locations will house testing laboratories for exhaustive film characterisation, and will be equipped to simulate customer conditions on packaging, printing and labelling machines. A new flexible Orientation Pilot Line will also be centrally installed in Virton, Belgium.

“This is a big step and great way to celebrate more than 40 years of continuous leadership in innovation”, said Pascale Wautelet, Global Technology Director. “We have embodied innovation with new products that have changed the flexible packaging and label industry, and established the company as the innovation leader in the market place. This new global footprint will give us access to breakthrough technology and support our aggressive growth plans.”

Scott Van Winter, EVP Americas, stated: “This underscores our long standing commitment to providing customers with next generation technologies. Our focus is on leveraging our global scale to deliver local advantages for our customers”.

Meanwhile, Jindal Films Europe is also adding on environmental sustainability capability at its Brindisi plant in Southern Italy. Combined Heat and Power (CHP), or co-generation as it is also known, is the process of capturing and using the waste heat produced by the generation of electricity. More recently, technological advances have enabled an additional benefit resulting in what is known as Trigeneration.

Trigeneration, the simultaneous production of heat, electrical power and cooling power from just one power source, allows for savings of up to 30% of primary energy as well as reduced C02 emissions from the lower consumption of fossil fuels.

Traditional power generation converts fuel into electricity and disperses heat in to the atmosphere. Cogeneration utilises part of the released heat into production by reducing the fuel consumption needed for heating. Trigeneration further reutilises the unused heat released in to the atmosphere by converting it into cooling and therefore avoiding the need to consume electricity to generate chilled water.

The installation of the new Trigeneration unit is expected to further reduce savings on primary energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by having an operating yield above 70%, “thanks to the conversion of the natural gas into electrical power, heat and cooling output”, said the company.

Jindal Films manufactures speciality oriented polypropylene(OPP) films, including multilayer white opaque films, metallised films and coated films, for flexible packaging and labelling applications.

It has affiliated production plants in Europe (Virton, Belgium; Kerkrade, The Netherlands; and Brindisi, Italy), and in the US (LaGrange, Georgia; and Shawnee, Oklahoma). The company and its affiliates have sales offices to support customer needs in countries around the world, including North America, Europe and Asia.