Extrusion International USA 6-2020

37 Extrusion International 6/2020 lower power consumption, and better thickness variation control. The upgrade in quality of the end product ( fi lm and bag) has helped the producers to create competitive advan- tage in the market. The improvement in ef fi ciency reduc- es the production cost and gives them the advantage to grow and expand year by year. Setting new standards in fi lm quality In the case of the company Volga, a producer located in Long Anh province has already set a new standard for the local market for LLDPE bags in terms of quality. “We are able to produce better quality fi lm using the exact same materials,” said Mr. Tuan, who has invested in ten more sets of Polystar in 2019, after having tried the fi rst ma- chine back in 2018. “This gives us a great advantage in the market, and we are able to dictate a better selling price.” Volga now produces one of the best quality fi lm products in the local market, with more than 90% of its fi lm products coming from Polystar machines. Higher productivity. Lower operation cost Another bag producer located in Ho Chi Minh City – Tam Sao, has been expanding from 300 tones per month to 800 per month thanks to its ability to produce good qual- ity yet low cost plastic bags, which are now exported to Europe, Thailand and Cambodia. “Our goal is to expand to 1,500 tones per month, and we rely heavily on Polystar blown film extruders to stay competitive in the market.” Mr. Ho, the owner of the company, has replaced all of its Chinese made blown film machines step by step with Polystar extruders since early 2016. “We were surprised that a simple ma- chine can make such a big difference in operation. To be honest, we had doubts in the beginning to invest in more expensive machines when we saw the price, as the initial investment on machines was more than doubled from our previous machine suppliers, but we are so happy afterwards that we made the right deci- sion 4 years ago.” Speaking about his key to success and fast growth during an onsite visit in 2019, Mr. Ho said that he calculates the overall operation cost carefully and found out that invest- ing in better machine is actually more cost-saving. “The machine investment is, in fact, a relatively small percent- age of our total operation cost which includes material, electricity, space and labor costs,” he added. “If you in- vest in the right machines, all of these other costs come down and the investment comes back in less than one year,” Mr. Ho emphasized. “I would say this is the most important factor that has put us ahead of other competi- tions.” Mr. Ho is satis fi ed that since having switched to Polystar machines, he has been able to reduce operation and labor costs signi fi cantly. “When we produce the same product on a Polystar twin head 55mm extruder, the output is al- most doubled comparing to a similar spec machine we had before. We’ve saved so much factory space and op- eration cost, basically producing more with less numbers of machines and less operators.” To further cut down production cost, the company uses a very high percentage of calcium carbonate compounds