Ceo Jan Åström says: “This is totally in line with our strategy to cultivate these markets, above all in Eastern Europe and China. The investments will enable us to meet customer demands more effectively and broaden our range of services.”
The Polish investments are being made in Poznan and Olawa, with around €7m being spent at each plant. In Poznan a new design centre for printing and laminating with a strong focus on consumer packaging and point-of-sale is being established, while the facilities at the Olawa factory, which produces corrugated board, are being enhanced to enable SCA to “benefit from the positive effects of the fast-growing Polish market”.
Meanwhile in Timisoara, eastern Romania, SCA is spending €10m to upgrade an existing box plant to a fully integrated corrugated board facility. The spend forms “part of the development of customer support” throughout the region, which is also the location for other SCA plants in Romania, a design centre in Budapest and sales and production in Hungary.
In China, in a US$12m investment, SCA is to move its Nanjing packaging operations to a newly built 30,000 sq m factory nearby to facilitate volume growth. Another new facility, in Suzhou near Shanghai, representing one of SCA's largest investments in China to date (at US$20m), opened in mid-April. This plant will function as a one-stop centre for customers, with manufacture of corrugated board, litho print and protective packaging taking place under one roof.
“This new state-of-the-art SCA packaging facility will provide a strategic platform for SCA's continuous growth in China,” says Rijk Schipper, head of SCA's Asia-Pacific business group. “We are also prepared for future expansion as SCA's packaging operations in the Suzhou region grow.”
