Page 48 - Plastics News October 2020

PRESS RELEASE

Vietnam – setting new standards for standard blown film machines

The Vietnamese plastic sector has grown significantly in Higher productivity. Lower operation cost.
the past 5 years thanks to many unique advantages that Another bag producer located in Ho Chi Minh city - Tam
the country has. The ability to produce lower cost yet
Sao, has been expanding from 300 tones per month to
good quality plastic products is ideal for export markets 800 per month thanks to its ability to produce good
such as the US, Japan, Europe, Australia and Cambodia. quality yet low cost plastic bags, which are now
The local market demand is also increasing in sectors
such as live seafood packaging, industrial and
agricultural film, in a country of large population of
nearly 100 million.
Since 2016, Polystar has already been working with 42
producers in Vietnam and has installed 187 sets of blown
film extruders for various applications such as general
packaging (garbage bags, vegetable and fruit bags,
shopping bags), seafood packaging and industrial
packaging.
Although many of the Polystar blown film machines
installed are simply standard one-layer machines,
Vietnamese producers have found major differences in
many areas compared to their existing machines (mostly exported to Europe, Thailand and Cambodia.
Chinese and locally made): Better film quality, higher
output capacity, lower power consumption, and “Our goal is to expand to 1,500 tones per month, and we
rely heavily on Polystar blown film extruders to stay
better thickness variation control.
competitive in the market.” Mr. Ho, the owner of the
The upgrade in quality of the end product (film and bag) company, has replaced all of its Chinese made blown film
has helped the producers to create competitive machines step by step with Polystar extruders since
advantage in the market. The improvement in efficiency early 2016. “We were surprised that a simple machine
reduces the production cost and gives them the can make such a big difference in operation. “To be
advantage to grow and expand year by year. honest, we had doubts in the beginning to invest in more
Setting new standards in film quality expensive machines when we saw the price, as the initial
In the case of the company Volga, a producer located in investment on machines was more than doubled from
Long Anh province has already set a new standard for the our previous machine suppliers,” but we are so happy
afterwards that we made the right decision 4 years ago.”
local market for LLDPE bags in terms of quality, “we are
able to produce better quality film using the exact same Speaking about his key to success and fast growth during
materials,” said Mr. Tuan, who has invested in ten more an onsite visit in 2019, Mr. Ho told us that he calculates
sets of Polystar in 2019, after having tried the first the overall operation cost carefully and found out that
machine back in 2018. “This gives us a great advantage investing in better machine is actually more cost-saving.
in the market, and we are able to dictate a better selling “The machine investment is, in fact, a relatively small
price.” Volga now produces one of the best quality film percentage of our total operation cost which includes
products in the local market, with more than 90% of its material, electricity, space and labor costs,” he added,
film products coming from Polystar machines. “if you invest 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
competitions.”
When asked to share details of the actual user
experience, Mr. Ho shared with us: “In our previous
machines, the electrical components start to give
problems here and there after just several months. You
would not know the difference in machine quality until
you really put them side by side and compare carefully,”
he added.
Mr. Ho is also satisfied that since having switched to
Polystar machines, he has been able to reduce operation

October 2020 48 Plastics News