Leading carton packaging supplier, SIG has reinforced its commitment to provide an industry leading innovation base for the entire value chain of food and beverage packaging, from research and development, validation of packaging material, to conducting customer product filling trials with the unveiling of 2 new buildings at its SIG Technology Center Asia Pacific in Suzhou, China.
The new addition will increase its total build-up area of the SIG Technology Center Asia Pacific (TCAP) from 17,450 to 21,860 sq.metre.
The expansion will enhance SIG TCAP’s technological innovation capability and help accelerate business growth. Lidong Fan, President and General Manager, Asia Pacific North at SIG said, “As the innovation engine of SIG in Asia Pacific, the expansion and upgrading of the technology center has once again set a new milestone for SIG’s development in China. The expanded and upgraded facility will further accelerate SIG’s sustainable business growth in Asia Pacific.”
The brand-new expansion in Building 3 simulates the customer’s real production environment and is equipped with Class 100,000 clean rooms. This includes the new R&D filling and testing area with 7 filling machine stations, covering aseptic and chilled filling equipment, which will provide in-house SV3 (system validation) capability.
The conversion of the former pilot plant in building 1 into a filling machine prototype development and testing facility will strengthen SIG’s R&D capabilities for equipment in the Asia Pacific region, enabling it to continuously develop new products with customers to meet market needs.
Angela Lu, President and General Manager, Asia Pacific South at SIG said, “The expansion and upgrading of the technology center allows SIG to continue accelerating the pace of innovation. With core technology support from the TCAP, we will become the industry leader in developing the next generation of innovative and sustainable packaging solutions for our customers in the region.”
Since its establishment in 2018, TCAP has been instrumental in the development of a series of innovative products, such as aseptic packaging without an aluminum layer and the development of chilled technology, including high-speed filling machines, one-step opening, local carton conversion and optimization of existing filling equipment in the market.
Julie Liu, Associate Director of Technical Services, TCAP at SIG said that it took them only 1 year to complete the construction of the new building.
Swiss-based SIG produced 49 billion packs and generated €3.1 billion (US$3.3 billion) in pro forma revenue in 2022.
