ALEMO was launched in 2007 by a courageous initiative of Dr. Ing. Andrea Sirk based on experience, passion for machinery and dedication to innovation. With degree in Chemical Engineering he worked for five years in a multinational company specialized in machinery for Steel Making, then as General Manager restructured a large nylon producing and reprocessing factory and then as entrepreneur restructured a PE foam producing and reprocessing company.
Today, ALEMO is a global leader in development and manufacturing of extrusion lines, lamination and other converting machinery for foamed products according to process and product requirements. ALEMO supplied extrusion lines and other Equipment to market leaders in almost every part of the World – Europe, North & Latin America, Australia, India, Russia, Japan and Central Asia.
Easy Engineering: What are the main areas of activity of the company?
ALEMO: ALEMO is specialized in manufacturing of foam machinery for production of Polyethylene (EPE), Polypropylene (EPP) and Polystyrene (XPS) foams. Packaging, Insulation, Automotive and Construction industry are the main areas where these foams are applied but not limited to.
ALEMO has its own R&D team, but we cooperate with external partners and institutions as well. We are constantly looking for technical solutions to make better foam machinery. Machines that can produce better and more reliable products, using less raw materials, less energy, less manpower, more recycled material, making less scrap and pushing products to become circular economy compliant.
E.E: What’s the news about new products?
ALEMO: One very interesting news concerns a feedback from one customer producing high quality foam on EXT130 extrusion machine (equipped with 4.0 foam production control technology). Their working routine is turning on/off the extruder almost each day. This means that EXT130 extruder has such an exceptional design of components combined with process stability that is able to produce foams with unexpected high quality soon after start-up. The ease of extruder’s handling was really beyond their expectations.
ALEMO is also pleased to present »The Winder«! This is not just an ordinary winder, this is »The Winder«! We developed and realized a winder with capability of winding and un-winding rolls with external diameter of up to 2.5 meter, with reduction of handling and plank lamination costs in the post extrusion process. This will change the future way of foam plank production (multilayer sheet foam lamination).
Another new product is the Foam corner protector cutting machine designed to cut corner protectors from backer rod profiles of different diameters during off-line operation. It was developed to significantly increase the productivity of companies supplying PE foam corner protectors.
E.E: What are the ranges of products?
ALEMO: ALEMO produces a wide range of foam extrusion lines with different downstream production line options:
- PE/PP foam sheet extruders able to produce foam sheets up to 3100mm width and 0,5mm – 25.0mm thickness with densities from 14 to 500 kg/m3 and capacities up to 1000 kg/h
- PE/PP foam pipe and profile extruders
- XPS foam profile and cornice extruders
Besides that, we have a large assortiment of converting machinery, winding machines, laminating machines and some specialties like 4.0 Foam Production Control system and FoamTrack that is incorporated into twin-screw extrusion lines with impressive results.
E.E: At what stage is the market where you are currently active?
ALEMO: Thanks to recyclability and fitting into circular economy standards, the market of foamed Polyolefins (and consequently machinery demand) is gaining importance and the demand is growing in different fields worldwide. Many non-recyclable foam products (like XPE) are being replaced by non-crosslinked PE and PP foams.
E.E: What can you tell us about market trends?
ALEMO: Basically, the market trends are moving into two directions. In first place, we see a demand to reduce the use of virgin material while increasing the use of recycled material, increasing productivity & energy consumption efficiency in order to reduce the carbon foot print.
The second trend is introducing new products that were not existing few years ago; some to replace existing non-recyclable products, some totally new. Quality foam extrusion is already very demanding when using virgin raw materials, and the reuse of recycled plastics represents a real challenge. In the near future, it will not be enough to reuse only few percentages of in-house recycled foam. The new goal is not only to have technology able to use 100% recycled foam in new products, but being able to reuse also Post-consumer recycled plastics (PCR). PCR is reprocessed plastics from households or commercial waste and the majority of which was used for packaging. In Europe, only around one third is currently recycled into new products. ALEMO’s R&D has been involved in these challenges for more than a year and it has already showed great results with foams produced on ALEMO extruders with up to 15% of PCR content.
E.E: What are the most innovative products marketed?
ALEMO: There are several innovations which make ALEMO extrusion lines and converting machinery more user-friendly and efficient, but if we have to point out one innovative product which will change the future of foam extrusion, this is definitely the ALEMO 4.0 FoamTrack™. This software was developed by ALEMO to constantly record every process parameter and saving data in an encrypted database. This allows the operator to easily track the recipes, raw material, power consumptions and all other important production data for each specific lot (temperatures, pressures, throughput, all gas and raw material dosing devices, winding settings, etc.). Production data can be further analyzed by creating reports and trends for each production lot, etc.
Thanks to this innovation and unique engineering concept, the main competitive advantage of ALEMO extruders is the capability to reproduce always the same and uniform product quality if applied same raw-material and extrusion process recipe, at each new start-up.
And last but not least, all the process parameters can also be shared with different Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), Enterprice resource planning (ERP) systems and eventual cloud platforms in real time.
E.E: What estimations do you have for 2022?
ALEMO: With increasing number of orders, we plan to double our sales revenue from 2021. We feel really confident and optimistic for the future growth of the company.
Follow ALEMO on social media to obtain the latest information about our presence on trade fairs around the globe.
ALEMO d.o.o.
SLOVENIA – EU
T: + 386 5 39 32 485