The Spanish-based company whose clients include Danone, Campina, Henkel and Kraft Foods bought a 77,000-square-foot plant in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, in December 2013 with operations starting this month.
Further expansion in eastern Europe
Enrique Royuela area manager exports, MENA, based in Madrid, told FoodProductionDaily.com the firm already has customers in the US but it wanted a factory in the States instead of manufacturing products in Mexico, which is what it had been doing up until now.
“We want to expand into the American market so it made more sense for us to open a production facility there,” he said.
“We have plans for another project to move into eastern Europe but that is still not ready.”
Amarzena Bierowiec, a quality assurance official at the Emsur facility in Elk Grove Village said the location was selected in part because of its proximity to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.
“We just recently started doing trial runs of packaging for some US customers,” she said, “Even though we bought the factory in December 2013 it took us a long time to buy and install all the equipment, hire the personnel, and get ready for full-scale manufacturing.”
Seventh manufacturing facility
Emsur has manufacturing operations in Madrid and Valencia, Spain, as well as France, Poland, Mexico and Argentina. Elk Grove Village is the firm’s seventh manufacturing facility.
Bierowiec added the site has the same type of equipment and capabilities as Emsur’s other facilities and can produce a variety of flexible plastic packages and package elements for manufacturers of coffee, tea, pasta, snack foods, and other food products.
She said globally, Emsur is particularly strong in dairy packaging. The company manufactures yogurt containers and lids, customized banderole paper, labels and stickers, and shrink sleeves.
“We do have a few large dairy manufacturers as customers,” she said. Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota are home to a number of major dairy product companies.
Whether for dairy or other food categories, Bierowiec indicated that Emsur’s US plant is ready to roll
“We do manufacturing and design on paper, plastic, stretch films and shrink films,” she added. “We can print in nine colors and handle a range of sealing options with lead times from four to six weeks.”