Expanding in terms of floor space has never been a problem for Qualified Innovation. Now the company is also expanding in terms of wider webs. A paper and film converter specializing in laminating and cohesive coating, Sugar Grove, IL-based Qualified Innovation has been growing steadily for the past 11 years. Starting out in a 5,000-sq-ft space, it moved to a 20,000-sq-ft facility and just recently picked up a 17,000-sq-ft building next door.

"Any time space became available we grabbed it, whether we were ready for it or not, because we knew we were going to need it," said Gary Fuller, Qualified Innovation president.

The new facility is currently housing materials for one of the largest orders Qualified has dealt with, plus a new coater/laminator line. The company bought the machinery because customers were asking for wider materials.

Currently, it makes a range of cohesive-coated products with a maximum width of 40 in. Among them are the Ful-Wrap® film and kraft products, which are made by laminating Microfoam® to high-density polypropylene film or kraft paper. The company's Tuff-Wrap® and Tuff-Wrap 2® are made with either a 2- or 3-mil HD film laminated to 60-lb bleached kraft with a cohesive coating. Low-density polyethylene and HDPE are also cohesive-coated. Coating materials are supplied by Northwest Coatings, LLC (www.northwestcoatings.com).

The new coater/laminator line can process the mentioned products in widths up to 65 in. "We've got such a wide range of materials running through this," Fuller said. "We've got another coater that's smaller doing (cohesive coating) and this one is going to be able to do all those, plus some others."

In addition, Fuller plans on having the new machine laminate 0.8-mil film to foam and up to 90-lb linerboard. "That's just one of the things that we wanted on this," Fuller said. "It fits our needs quite well."

Qualified built the coating station and part of the laminating section, added a corona treater from Corona Designs (www.coronadesigns.com), installed used unwinds and rewinds from Black Clawson Converting Machinery (www.bcconverting.com), web guides from Erhardt+Leimer (www.erhardt-leimer-us.com) and tension controls from Dover Flexo Electronics (www.dfe.com). Fuller, an engineer by background, wanted to make sure that the new line suits the company's needs. "My philosophy has been that machines do what I want them to do, and if we need something different on the machine, we put it on," he said.

The line was completed when Advance Systems, Inc., (www.advancesystems.com) installed its 65-in. dryer in late August 2005. The new flotation dryer is a single-zone system designed for kraft paper and linerboard, and LDPE and HDPE films. Fully automated, it comes with a new program for easy troubleshooting from the control interface. Qualified Innovation operators have been able to run 3-mil LDPE at 300 fpm with the oven temperature only between 100 and 105 deg F, as well. "The oven is moving enough air around to get (the substrate) dry," Fuller said, which translates to lower energy consumption.

Right now, Qualified is testing the new system by running a variety of substrates through it, such as cohesive-coated 50-lb paper, 69-lb linerboard, and 3- and 5-mil film. Fuller hopes to get a good "feel for it" before actual jobs are processed. Although Qualified's original coater, a 40-in. system from Tech Dryer (now W.R. Grace & Co.), is inundated with jobs from the company's largest client and other regular clients, Fuller has no plans on moving some of those jobs to the new line.

"I'm expecting that one to be completely busy with new business," Fuller said. "Eventually, it should double or triple our business."

Along with coating and laminating, Qualified does its own slitting and sheeting. It has two 40-in. slitters with perfing capabilities, a 48-in. Dusenbery (www.dusenbery.com) slitter and a 42-in. Elite Cameron center-surface duplex slitter.

It has a 30-in. sheeter from Maxson Automatic Machinery Co. (www.maxsonautomatic.com) that produces about 100,000 5 × 10-in. cohesive sheets a month, carefully stacking them to prevent sticking.

Because of the relatively small amount of work the sheeter does, people have often asked how Qualified can possibly profit from it. Fuller replies, "No one else wants to do it, so we charge what we have to." That's not to say Fuller doesn't want any competition. "Other companies are dropping their prices to keep others out. That's not the way to expand a market. Competition is good. It'll keep you going."

So far, such competition has been the driving force behind Fuller's growing business. "People will come to us to do different things and those will turn into a whole gamut of new products," Fuller said. "We're constantly innovating. We're one of the smaller companies in cohesive, but we've got one of the widest range of products, and we are constantly open for new ones."

It's just one more example of expansion at Qualified Inno-vation.