Scanfill AB celebrates its 10th anniversary.
The company history started as a project 12 years ago. As Scanfill developed grades useful for the packaging industry, through the mother company Polykemi AB, Scanfill started with selling granules only. Management noticed, not long after the start-up, that the need of a sheet line extruder was needed in order to produce trial rolls for potential customers to try in their thermoforming machines.
The first sheet extruder was purchased 2010 and the second one, with a wider extrusion die, 2014. Scanfill has been producing granules from the beginning with a twin screw extruder, and the second one was purchased 2018 with twice the capacity compared to the first one. Upgrades such as EVOH equipment and customized rolls making it possible to produce thin sheet giving the thickness span from 150µm to 1200µm are just some investments Scanfill has made due to curiosity of being able to produce the best customer specific sheet on the market.
Material development has been ongoing and multiple grades are now offered; Multi-layer sheet with the possibility to include EVOH (Scanfill Sheet) and granules for sheet production (Scanfill Foil), extrusion blow molding (Scanfill Bottle), injection molding (Scanfill Injection) and blown film extrusion (Scanfill Pack).
Lots of development has been focused on food contact approvals, colors of various kinds (from gold look-alike sheet to two colored sheet and fiber look-alike) and EVOH barriers with up to 7 extruded layers.
The market has shifted from only using conventional oil based polymers to more BIO inspired raw materials and so has Scanfill. All original grades have been upgraded to also be available as BIO-based, which fulfills the requirements from customers and consumers. Thus far Scanfill is only using BIO-HDPE made from sugar cane plants, but is intensely working on materials that could be biodegradable to match requests from today’s market demands.
Scanfill has grown slowly but steady in the Nordic countries over the years and have over time reached out to northern Europe as well. Scanfill expanded and invested in further production capacity at Polykemi Compounds in Kunshan, China, in 2014.
Today, the biggest markets are the ready meal trays and other food stuff applications and a newly found market is for industry applications.
The journey thus far has been a roller coaster, but Scanfill will continue the journey with an established brand and material 10 years after it all started.