CCL announces official opening of sustainable sleeve label hub in Austria

Label Solutions Packaging Solutions

CCL Industries has announced that it has officially opened its new sustainable sleeve label hub in Dornbirn, Austria, completing the move from its former site in Hohenems.

The new facility represents a €50 million investment and more than doubles the size of the previous site. Nearly 10,000 square metres are dedicated to production and a fully automated warehouse, including intelligent computer controlled software to optimise storage space management and automate intra-logistics.

‘The move brings a lot of improvements. Not only is the building state of the art and provides a modern workplace for our employees, but the technology is also state of the art. The building has been designed according to modern sustainability aspects and with the long term goal of further reducing our carbon footprint in production,’ said Günther Birkner, member of the management team at CCL.

‘Shrink sleeves are an adhesive-free decoration technology for bottles and other containers. The labels are applied by heat and act like a second skin on even the most unusual container shapes. At Dornbirn, we focus on the latest sustainable shrink sleeve technology – made from floatable low density polyolefin material. The sleeves easily separate from the primary container in the sink/float process at the sorters and recyclers, ideally supporting material separation and efficient recycling.’

‘Our brand name for these sleeves is EcoFloat and they have become well known in the packaging industry,’ explained general manager Jens Winkler. "We are proud to serve our local and international customers from our new facility in Dornbirn, who appreciate our innovative spirit, investment in the latest technology and reliable technical service.’

The building has many green features. Heating is provided entirely by recovering heat generated by production machinery, compressors and the thermal oxidation system for solvents. A central distribution centre manages the distribution of heating and cooling.

‘There is also a PV system on the roof with more than 2000 panels and a peak output of almost 900 kWp. The system produces the equivalent of 721,000 kWh per year, equivalent to the annual consumption of around 200 households. More than 80%of the electricity we produce is used internally, which saves 338 tonnes of CO2 per year,’ said Bernd Schmidle, production manager at CCL Dornbirn, who led the planning and construction of the new building and implemented the latest technology.

The new site is already ISO14001 certified.