Troisdorf - Reifenhäuser Reicofil has announced the sale of an RF5 nonwovens line to PFNonwovens for their production facility in South Africa. The hygiene and medical line is scheduled to be commissioned in the fourth quarter of 2022, and will be the first RF5 SMMS 3200 line operating in Africa.
PFNonwovens is continuing to grow its footprint in the US, Europe and Africa with this latest investment targeted at setting a new benchmark of high-quality nonwovens products for the Southern African markets.
“It is important for us to bring cutting edge nonwoven manufacturing capabilities to emerging markets as well," said Tonny de Beer, CTO of PFNonwovens. "Parents in Southern Africa rely even more on high performance nonwovens in their diapers to provide comfort and protection to their babies. At the same time our customers rely on consistently high-quality nonwoven fabrics to enable day-to-day stability of their high-speed converting operations. And, of course, locally produced materials have become essential to eliminate long supply chain risks in addition to economic and environmental sustainability benefits."
He continued: "With the RF5 technology we will deliver a high level of performance at a lower basis weight compared to alternative platforms. The new RF5 line is therefore the perfect addition to our existing Reicofil BiCo line at our Cape Town manufacturing site, and we are convinced that the RF5 technology is a significant step in the right direction to satisfy demand in the African market.”
The latest machine generation RF5 is designed to set benchmarks in terms of quality, performance, availability, efficiency, and machine intelligence. “Since 2018, Reicofil has been delivering RF5 lines to support the global hygiene industry across four continents The hygiene industry values the consistent product quality provided by RF5 and the key product performance properties it delivers at lower basis weights helping to drive industry sustainability goals," added Markus Mueller, Sales Director of Reifenhäuser Reicofil and Key Account Manager for PFNonwovens. "With an energy requirement of 1-1.2 kilowatt hours per kilogram produced, Reicofil 5 manages the conversion from raw material to nonwoven more efficiently than any other technology on the market. We are very pleased that after many years of partnership cooperation with PFNonwovens, we are now able to establish this technology at their South Africa location and look forward to our further collaboration to serve the hygiene and medical market in the whole region with top quality products.”