Adding value to coatings

Originally known as Morane, with the expansion of coating facilities at its Banbury, UK site, Payne is offering contract extrusion coating to markets other than its traditional print protection encapsulation field.

“For the last twelve months we have offered ourselves as contract coaters especially on development work for converters,” said Richard Burhouse, the company’s business development and product manager. “We have looked at paper coating and flexible packaging and in particular at barrier materials, which are very interesting.” He explained: “There are not that many extrusion coaters so we do offer an important service.”

Some 80 per cent of the turnover is represented by the print finishing film – either PET or PP - extrusion coated with heat activated copolymer product. “Eighteen months ago that would have been 100 per cent,” he said. “We have been able to grow a 20 per cent share of our turnover by coating such things as non wovens, building industry membranes and high barrier materials, for example for medical packaging as well as security films.” Customers cannot be named as they are in sensitive areas “but we are live with three companies,” he added.

“On the barrier front we are not looking to compete with the big flexible packaging guys, but what we can do is focus on high quality, high value items. We are working on smaller niche applications,” he revealed.

The company is also able to make use of the specialist knowledge of the other business units within the Payne group, such as its tear tape operation in Nottingham, which offers expertise in pressure sensitive coating and gravure print, as well as in-depth research and development of key end markets.

The company moved to its 8,000m² site in 2000 from three smaller units in Banbury. With the move came a £3M investment by parent company Filtrona. “They have always looked to put the best equipment into the business,” said Richard Burhouse. “Between 1998 and ‘99 we were running the print protection coating at 110 per cent capacity.” (Morane had been extrusion coating since 1979). “The company wanted to grow the business so they approached Davis-Standard and Black Clawson. They decided to go for the bigger and better equipment and the wider 1.6m line. At the same time they saw that they would be able to get into other materials – for example we can also co-extrude on this line.” The dies are from EDI and the treater is supplied by Sherman Treaters. A Eurotherm thickness gauge operates on a closed loop system and edge trim is achieved on line using Tidland equipment. Reels are removed onto a Hywema 4,000kg scissor lift. The line features automatic splicing and reel change.

“The fact we can slit from our jumbo reels and rewind is important too,” he said. The latest investment has been some £500,000 in a Titan SR8 cantilever slitter rewinder to further extend the slitting armoury, as well as an impressive 161 station racking system for reels. The 1,650mm wide Bobst built slitter rewinder runs at up to 600m/min and “enables us to offer improved lead times and order turnaround”.

Capacity has been increased to 60Mm², which leaves plenty of growth potential. “And we have the possibility of diversity in coatings, for example we can look at ionomers and Surlyn grades.”

Film is sourced from European manufacturers in the main with resin systems for the print protection films being supplied by Exxon. Niche systems come from several suppliers. The bulk polymers are stored in silos and fed to the line. Some specialist material is in bags and is blended on line.

And what of the future? “We are certainly putting time, energy and resources into barriers and thin films. The policy will be to develop other markets, but not to the detriment of print protection. It is a mature industry, but we want to keep hold of our market share in the UK. At the same time we want to put more of the converters’ out-sourced work through our plant.

“The key to it all is adding value,” he concluded.