Hamburg – Groundbreaking ceremony for long-term corporate development: the KHS Group, a manufacturer of filling and packaging systems, began building a new production shop at its site in Hamburg, Germany, last Friday. With it Group companies KHS Corpoplast GmbH and KHS Plasmax GmbH will gain an extra 2,500 m².  Adapted production processes are intended to continue to ensure short delivery times in the future and meet growing customer demands regarding machine and bottle testing. KHS is investing €3.5 million in the extension. 

"We're driving growth at our headquarters for stretch blow molders in Hamburg with the new building," stresses Thomas Karell, managing director of KHS Corpoplast GmbH, at the groundbreaking ceremony. "With this increase in capacity we're also cementing our chances of realizing our vision of technological and service leadership in the PET segment for the future." In erecting the new building the KHS Group is satisfying a growing demand on the PET market worldwide; high-quality KHS technology will continue to be available to customers with the usual short delivery times. The company will then be in a position to commission more lines at the same time than is currently the case.

Increasing capacities for increasing sales
The latest addition to the KHS plant in Hamburg will give it an extra 2,500 m². On a site measuring 54,000 m² in the suburb of Meiendorf the company will then have around 23,000 m² of floor space.  The new building will contain two floors for production and offices, into which KHS will integrate commissioning and acceptance testing for stretch blow molders, blow molder/filler blocks and PET coating machines built by KHS Plasmax GmbH.

The new facility concludes the process begun in 2012 to boost production efficiency, when in the first building phase KHS invested in a new commissioning shop covering 2,300 m². The new shop marks the start of the second phase of construction. 

Faster processing times thanks to new production cycles

KHS is optimizing its procurement, logistics and assembly processes on the basis of its modular product structure. The company will incorporate a cyclic production process into its new facility, where the materials required for a two-day work cycle are supplied to the relevant workstation. After this, the work is passed on to the next stage in the process. The workstations will be designed to include all the necessary work equipment, such as tools, lifting and assembly devices and material provision systems, so that no time is wasted for the transit, searching and setup of components.  "We've already considerably reduced our processes and assembly and processing times. We'll be carrying on with this," says Karell. 

KHS wants to promote the production of blocked systems in particular – PET bottle blow molding, filling, capping, labeling and coating – and establish these on the market. "We're recording a significant increase in sales of our FreshSafe PET^® bottle coating process," states Dr. Joachim Konrad, managing director of KHS Plasmax GmbH, the company responsible for coating technology. According to the current prognosis this area is destined to keep on growing thanks to an increase in demand worldwide.

The shell of the building is to be erected by the winter, with interior construction scheduled for the spring of 2016. After this, production is to start rolling. "We're pleased that we can start phase two of our extension in our anniversary year," smiles Karell. KHS Corpoplast GmbH was founded in Hamburg 40 years ago. With the new building the KHS Group is demonstrating its commitment to the production site in Hamburg. With a positive corporate development forecast the KHS Group wishes to hire more specialists for its design engineering, development, process technology and product sales units. At the time of writing, KHS Corpoplast and KHS Plasmax together employ around 370 people.