01.01.07
Location: Roasio, Italy
Sales: $87 million
Description: Key Personnel
Gianni Boscolo, president; Carlo Soave, CEO; Pietro Landone, commercial director
Plants
Roasio, Italy; Aschersleben, Germany; Cincinnati, OH
Processes
Carded thermal bonded, spunmelt, carded resinbonded, carded ATB, multilayer Spun-Pulp-Carded composites.
Major Market
Hygiene
Investment continues for Italian nonwovens maker Albis SpA as it re-engineers its role from a carded producer to encompass a whole range of other technologies. The company has recently added a large-scale spunbond/pulp/carding line at its Aschersleben, Germany facility, continuing its tradition of offering unique and proprietary technology to the hygiene market.
“It’s a new spunlace generation,” said commercial director Pietro Landone. “In fact, we have a lot of flexibility in playing with the different components of this line.”
Unlike traditional spunlace products, which are weak in the cross direction, leading to breakage, this technology makes a substrate that is much stronger. The new technology will allow Albis, whose business is 95% centered on hygiene, to target new markets—particularly wipes. “Wipes is definitely big because it is so large for applications like baby or personal care,” Mr. Landone said. “The flexibility of this new line will help us target a number of different products including wet and dry wipes. We are in the phase where we are running all the possible product combinations to see what advantages we have.”
Albis is unphased by strong competition in the wipes market, which has attracted considerable investment in recent years. “Our vision is to arrive in the market offering something completely unique. Unique in how it’s made, in terms of performance, even in terms of looks. In fact we can pattern material with hydroembossing with dedicated drawings tailor made for each customer. Colored material and heat embossing of the nonwoven is also possible. We can customize as much as we want.”
Next year, Albis will start up another line, which is being referred to as the world’s largest line, at its German site. Seven meters wide, this SMS line will be based on Neumag/Albis technology and will make products with very low basis weights, below 15 gpsm to respond to the current demands of the hygiene market. “Here in Italy, we already make products 15 gpsm, 13, gpsm, even 12 and 10 and we are aiming to do even better in Germany targeting basis weights as low as 5 gpsm,” Mr. Landone said. “We want to specialize in fine denier, very low basis weights. The trick is to maintain the same performance as in higher basis weights.”
These two new investments join one resin bonded-Air Thru bonded line and an SMS line (also based on Ason Neumag technology) in Italy, two carded thermal bonded lines and a staple fiber long spinning line in Germany and one resin bonded line in Ohio.
In 2003, Albis was the largest worldwide producer of carded thermal bonded nonwovens with an estimated 30,000 tons of capability, but as the global hygiene market has lessened its demand for thermal bonded nonwovens and become more reliant on spunbond, Albis has also expanded its technology portfolio. This process began in 2004 when it made the strategic decision to reconfigure one of its Italian lines to make air through bonded and resin bonded material and add Ason Neumag AST bicomponent spunbond technology on another line to make spunbond nonwovens.
According to Mr. Landone, the company’s expansion will continue when it converts one of the carders in Germany to a through-air bonded line. “The carded technology is shrinking but we still have a good position in this market because we have the two lines in Germany producing full capacity. Still, we want to be ready to introduce new products.”
Just in case, the converted line will be a convertible and still have the ability to convert back to regular calender bonded technology.
“You have to be proactive, fast and try to anticipate future events as much as possible. If you just react, it will take a long time to respond. Investments take a long time. You will lose not only time but also money.”
To be resilient to the ever-changing demands of the market, Albis is creating a diversified technology base that is flexible enough to respond quickly as new needs arise. “What we are trying to do is spread out over all of the technologies,” Mr. Landone said. “We are trying be different and worth it, wherever our customers want us to be located.”
And, while success is certainly the goal, executives are aware that industry troubles will prevent too large of a windfall from coming their way. “I am not aware of too many people making a lot of money in our business. Our goal is to grow steadily and in a healthy way. This is a family company with a stated aim to grow sustainably. We believe the best way to achieve this is primarily through innovation—innovation in technology, products and commercial approaches. We are not about short-term profit maximization”"
Sales: $87 million
Description: Key Personnel
Gianni Boscolo, president; Carlo Soave, CEO; Pietro Landone, commercial director
Plants
Roasio, Italy; Aschersleben, Germany; Cincinnati, OH
Processes
Carded thermal bonded, spunmelt, carded resinbonded, carded ATB, multilayer Spun-Pulp-Carded composites.
Major Market
Hygiene
Investment continues for Italian nonwovens maker Albis SpA as it re-engineers its role from a carded producer to encompass a whole range of other technologies. The company has recently added a large-scale spunbond/pulp/carding line at its Aschersleben, Germany facility, continuing its tradition of offering unique and proprietary technology to the hygiene market.
“It’s a new spunlace generation,” said commercial director Pietro Landone. “In fact, we have a lot of flexibility in playing with the different components of this line.”
Unlike traditional spunlace products, which are weak in the cross direction, leading to breakage, this technology makes a substrate that is much stronger. The new technology will allow Albis, whose business is 95% centered on hygiene, to target new markets—particularly wipes. “Wipes is definitely big because it is so large for applications like baby or personal care,” Mr. Landone said. “The flexibility of this new line will help us target a number of different products including wet and dry wipes. We are in the phase where we are running all the possible product combinations to see what advantages we have.”
Albis is unphased by strong competition in the wipes market, which has attracted considerable investment in recent years. “Our vision is to arrive in the market offering something completely unique. Unique in how it’s made, in terms of performance, even in terms of looks. In fact we can pattern material with hydroembossing with dedicated drawings tailor made for each customer. Colored material and heat embossing of the nonwoven is also possible. We can customize as much as we want.”
Next year, Albis will start up another line, which is being referred to as the world’s largest line, at its German site. Seven meters wide, this SMS line will be based on Neumag/Albis technology and will make products with very low basis weights, below 15 gpsm to respond to the current demands of the hygiene market. “Here in Italy, we already make products 15 gpsm, 13, gpsm, even 12 and 10 and we are aiming to do even better in Germany targeting basis weights as low as 5 gpsm,” Mr. Landone said. “We want to specialize in fine denier, very low basis weights. The trick is to maintain the same performance as in higher basis weights.”
These two new investments join one resin bonded-Air Thru bonded line and an SMS line (also based on Ason Neumag technology) in Italy, two carded thermal bonded lines and a staple fiber long spinning line in Germany and one resin bonded line in Ohio.
In 2003, Albis was the largest worldwide producer of carded thermal bonded nonwovens with an estimated 30,000 tons of capability, but as the global hygiene market has lessened its demand for thermal bonded nonwovens and become more reliant on spunbond, Albis has also expanded its technology portfolio. This process began in 2004 when it made the strategic decision to reconfigure one of its Italian lines to make air through bonded and resin bonded material and add Ason Neumag AST bicomponent spunbond technology on another line to make spunbond nonwovens.
According to Mr. Landone, the company’s expansion will continue when it converts one of the carders in Germany to a through-air bonded line. “The carded technology is shrinking but we still have a good position in this market because we have the two lines in Germany producing full capacity. Still, we want to be ready to introduce new products.”
Just in case, the converted line will be a convertible and still have the ability to convert back to regular calender bonded technology.
“You have to be proactive, fast and try to anticipate future events as much as possible. If you just react, it will take a long time to respond. Investments take a long time. You will lose not only time but also money.”
To be resilient to the ever-changing demands of the market, Albis is creating a diversified technology base that is flexible enough to respond quickly as new needs arise. “What we are trying to do is spread out over all of the technologies,” Mr. Landone said. “We are trying be different and worth it, wherever our customers want us to be located.”
And, while success is certainly the goal, executives are aware that industry troubles will prevent too large of a windfall from coming their way. “I am not aware of too many people making a lot of money in our business. Our goal is to grow steadily and in a healthy way. This is a family company with a stated aim to grow sustainably. We believe the best way to achieve this is primarily through innovation—innovation in technology, products and commercial approaches. We are not about short-term profit maximization”"