Page 8 - Packaging News magazine July-August 2022

8 NEWS |
www.packagingnews.com.au | July – August 2022
Jamestrong invests $6m in aerosol can plant
Abbe brings four businesses under one brand
JAMESTRONG Packaging is set to expand its Taree, NSW facility with a new aluminium casting line to produce slugs used in the manufacture of aerosol cans.
The new casting facility will enable Jamestrong Packaging – a leading aerosol and food can manufacturer in Australasia – to ramp up local production to meet increasing demand for its products, while also creating local jobs.
Jamestrong has seven manu- facturing plants at key locations in NSW, Victoria and New Zealand. The Taree facility, which in 2021 marked a 30-year and 2.7bn-can production mile- stone, employs 70 full-time staff, with the expansion set to add 30 jobs during the construction phase, and 12 ongoing jobs.
Jamestrong CEO Alex Commins said, “As one of the largest employers in Taree, Jamestrong is looking to bolster our existing aerosol can manu- facturing operation, by reshoring manufacturing capabilities and creating jobs.”
Commins told PKN the new casting facility will have the capacity to produce 160 million slugs a year which will meet the plant’s current production out- put of 100 million cans a year.
The plan is for the new line to be commissioned by October 2023. “Having our own casting line will resolve supply chain chal- lenges, but more importantly, it reduces the lead time for custom- ers from four months to less than
four weeks,” Commins said. “This improves our ability to respond quickly to our cus- tomers’ opportunities in the market. It also removes over 11,000 sea miles of carbon foot- print, and gives us the option to use Australian-made low carbon
aluminium ingot.”
The new casting facility is to
be installed in existing buildings adjacent to the can making plant. This major engineering project will include civil works to build special foundations for the line, which comprises a furnace, con- tinuous casting machine, hot rolling mills, cold rolling mills, stamping, rumbling and anneal- ing machines.
The installation will include imported and locally manu- factured equipment, with the furnace built in Turkey, the Hazellett continuous casting system and rolling mills from the USA, while the rumbler and annealer will be custom-built for Jamestrong locally.
Jamestrong’s $6m investment in the new aluminium slug casting line and plant upgrade will be supple- mented by a $240K grant coming from the NSW Government’s Regional Job Creation Fund. ■
LEFT: Investing in local manufacturing: Jamestrong CEO Alex Commins (right) with Parliamentary Secretary to the Deputy Premier, and for Regional Jobs and Investment, Gurmesh Singh, at the Taree aerosol can-making facility to announce the $6m casting line investment.
ABBE is the new brand name for the family owned and operated businesses of Abbe Corrugated, Austcor, Zacpac and Abbe Industrial, which until now have traded as separate entities in the Australian market.
The group of packaging manufacturers presented the new brand livery at the recent AUSPACK expo for the first time, ahead of the official announce- ment at the end of May.
The newly united entity says the move will enable the busi- nesses to provide customers with an even better experience through the unification of all the trading entities under a common brand name.
It says the brand unification will enable the Abbe Group of companies to structure its busi- nesses nationally and offer its products and innovative solu- tions across Australia.
The group will be led by joint managing directors Anthony O’Sullivan and Trevor Barnes. The directors are of the firm belief that “consolidation of the national offering will make
ABOVE: Abbe showed its new brand livery for the first time at AUSPACK in Melbourne. Pictured here is sales and marketing director, Daniel O’Sullivan.
it easier to build on the wealth of shared knowledge and excel- lence across the group”.
Anthony O’Sullivan said, “We’re proud to provide the best packaging solutions for every type of enterprise, from established businesses to e-commerce start-ups. We’re proof that being proudly fam- ily-owned and operated is no barrier to innovation and a superior customer experience.
“Bringing our family of busi- nesses together has given us the perfect opportunity to think about what kind of business we are and want to continue to become.”
O’Sullivan said customer ser- vice is at the core of the group, with collective values that have always driven a deep customer facing culture.
“These [values] are: Respect, Ownership, Teamwork and Excellence – they capture what makes us so special.”
The Abbe brand unification is accompanied by an overall brand refresh, which includes a new Abbe logo and tag- line, ‘making packaging easy’ which the group says repre- sents “a shared commitment to innovation, sustainability, and culture, as well as updated com- pany values”. ■