Barrier-film converter J&A (Suzhou, Jiangsu, China) will install an 8-layer AquaFrost® blown-film line (left) from Canada's Brampton Engineering at its headquarters plant later this spring. "We want to produce film with high clarity and the ability to thermoform," says Madame Xuewen Gao, general manager of J&A. "The AquaFrost output rates are competitive with the cast process, and it will produce very little scrap." J&A, which already has three BE blown-film lines, studied the 5-layer AquaFrost line currently running at the supplier's technology center before the purchase.

AquaFrost is a downward-blown, water-quenched film process, which uses all the same components of a conventional blown-film line, except that they are upside down.