New plants planned for Egypt and India
egypt Huhtamaki is to set up three new manufacturing units to boost growth in its flexible packaging business segment.
The largest of the new units will be in the greater Cairo area in Egypt. The other two will be in northeast India. In addition, a labelmanufacturing unit in the Mumbai area will be relocated and modernized.
“The investment in Egypt marks our entry into manufacturing flexible packaging in Africa,” said JukkaMoisio, CEO of HuhtamäkiOyj.
“With its rapid population growth Africa is expected to offer sizeable future growth opportunities to us and our customers. With the investments in India we will further improve our geographic coverage of the country and our ability to service customers in food and pharma industries. After these additions our total number of manufacturing units in India grows to 17.”
The new manufacturing unit in Egypt will be owned and operated as a joint venture in which Huhtamaki holds75% and its Egyptian joint venture partner MoldedFiber 25%. The total investment including the land purchase, the first phase of the facility construction, machinery and utilities is expected to be about EUR23m, with Huhtamaki’s share about EUR17m.
Manufacturing at the facility is scheduled to begin during 2018 and the unit is expected to employ about 300 employees when fully operational.
The unit will serve global and local flexible packaging customers as well as export its products into other countries. Currently Huhtamaki serves flexible packaging customers in Egypt from its operations in the UAE and India.
“We’re excited to expand our manufacturing network into Africa”, said Olli Koponen, executive vice-president, flexible packaging business segment. “We will replicate the state of the art solutions from our newest unit in United Arab Emirates and look forward to servicing new and current customers with efficiently produced topquality flexible packaging.”