The new plant is located close to SIG’s existing production facility at the Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP), which allows for shared resources in both production and operations. The new facility is also close to SIG’s Asia Pacific Tech Center, with innovation capabilities to introduce new concepts and solutions to SIG customers.
SIG said having its tech center nearby ensures SIG can keep pace with, and anticipate, new trends.
Samuel Sigrist, CEO of SIG, said, “The Asia Pacific region continues to be one of the major growth engines for aseptic carton packaging. The expansion of our production network will enable us to further strengthen our position in the growing Chinese market. It also means we can respond more quickly to the needs of our customers to provide holistic solutions to the food and beverage industry.”
By building a second production plant in China, SIG said it is committed to serving the Chinese market and to customers across the Asia Pacific region. The smart manufacturing system covers extrusion, printing, creasing, cutting and sealing.
Sigrist said, “SIG has built up a strong customer base across the Asia Pacific region, providing outstanding innovation capability and end-to-end solutions for differentiated products, smarter factories and connected packs. Our close partnership with the two largest Chinese dairies, and other food and beverage companies, will continue to grow and develop.”
By 2024, the new plant will cover an area of 120,000 square metres and is expected to have an annual production capacity of 8bn carton packs. It has been designed and built to have the lowest possible carbon emissions. Photovoltaic panels on the roofs can provide 1.5m kWh of solar energy and collected rainwater is also reused after treatment to save around 28,000 tonnes of tap water per annum. In addition to energy-saving lighting devices, special lighting systems are installed to reduce electricity consumption.
The new plant’s environmental, safety and operation performance has been recognized with a international industry certification: LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) gold certification for building design and construction.
SIG’s new packaging plant was the first plant in China’s aseptic packaging industry to be built in strict accordance with the LEED gold certification standard.
