To do things with films that haven't been done before,” says product development manager Eric Bartholomay, summing up what drives Toray Plastics (America), Inc. “And by doing that, make films more economical or with better performance.”

Amid the ever-shifting tides of the plastic-film business—industry consolidation, skyrocketing cost increases, foreign competition, and high-tech customer demands, Toray Plastics' approach will be necessary to thrive in the future, Bartholomay says.

The North Kingstown, RI filmmaker, part of Japan's $11-billion Toray Industries, Inc., is unique among primary-substrate providers as the only US domestic producer of both polypropylene and polyester films. Its Torayfan® and Trea® PP and Lumirror® PET film products brought in $340 million in sales last year. End-use applications range from flexible packaging, lidding and thermal-transfer ribbon to labels, electronics, and solar-control materials. More than 900,000 sq ft of manufacturing space on Rhode Island's scenic Quonset Point houses three oriented PET and four biaxially-oriented PP film lines as well as four metallizers. As the first trade publication ever allowed inside, Converting got an exclusive look this summer at Toray's operations.

“It's a unique situation for us to be able to offer both kinds of film,” adds Milan Moscaritolo, sales and marketing manager for the Lumirror Division. “Suppliers going into an end-user, packaging or label converter usually have one film or the other. It's a real plus for us, having both polyester and polypropylene films.”

Still, a broader offering of film types is only one facet of Toray Plastics' strategy. Market diversification, close collaboration with packagers (see sidebar), heavy R&D investment, and following its products far down the supply chain are all equally important. Also, in an industry with a shrinking number of players, staying out of the merger game has actually been beneficial for Toray, Bartholomay says.

“We're not faced with trying to integrate three dissimilar technologies or unrelated product lines into one,” he says. “We are one company, and instead of reducing the number of product types, we're expanding our product lines and the number of markets we serve.”

That's certainly true for the polyester side of Toray's business. While previously committed to magnetic media (a rapidly declining market) and thermal-transfer ribbon products, the PET-film lines are now aimed more toward flexible-packaging substrates. These include clear and two-side treated films, metallized structures, and new transparent lidding materials. Metallization capacity is getting a boost from a new fifth metallizer, which will reportedly be the world's largest at 4.5 meters wide. A 27,200-sq-ft plant addition is currently under construction to house the system that will increase output by 25 million lbs a year.

R&D and testing are critical to the added-value concept Toray emphasizes. The North Kingstown operation regularly collaborates with sister R&D facilities in France, Japan and Korea—all of which have pilot lines. “We have very strong local R&D, but we also have very deep global R&D,” says Moscaritolo.

At the other end of the manufacturing chain, Toray tracks its products' performance all the way to the grocery store. Laboratory staff members regularly bring back samples of packaging made with Toray films. Testing then determines what the material is still capable of doing (oxygen- and water-vapor transmission rates), and those data are tied back into more than 20 years of production records. The site's extensive lab features 10 Mocon OTR/WVTR systems (www.mocon.com).

“On every single roll of film that's produced, there's a swatch taken off and tested,” explains Richard Schloesser, senior vice president and general manager of the Torayfan Division. “There's a record of it. On the polypropylene side, we guarantee the barriers. It's right on the datasheet.”

“One thing you can say of Toray: we're statistically sound,” adds Moscaritolo.

When it comes to Toray's filmmaking, the operative word is “control.” That concept extends as far back as the company manufacturing its own PET resin prior to the film's cast extrusion on mainly in-house engineered systems. During filmmaking, proprietary equipment along with NCD Infrared Engineering nuclear beta sensors (www.ndcinfrared.com) measure and help maintain gauge control. Equipment from Marshall and Williams Plastics (www.mwplastics.com) as well as Toray-built machinery casts and orients both PP and polyester films before corona-treatment and winding.

Web breaks are remarkably rare compared to its competitors, says Paul Urick, senior director of manufacturing for Torayfan operations. Only four employees are needed to run the division's three PP-film lines, for example, and “where other people might have three or four web breaks a day, we have maybe 10 a month,” Urick says.

Total just-in-time production means no warehousing finished goods. Parent rolls, typically 7 meters wide, are immediately slit to order downstream and in-line with the casting systems before being packaged and shipped.

Smooth, efficient manufacturing aside, Toray Plastics (America), Inc. does have its challenges. Chief among these is growing competition from low-cost foreign filmmakers, especially polyester-film capacity coming on in China and India.

“There's a small tidal wave of imported polyester films,” Moscaritolo says. “You have to seek higher ground and not let that distract you. There will be capable films imported, but again it's going to come down to the price at the end of the day when you add in performance and customer service. In our strategy, we'll compete just fine.”

Some converters have brought in foreign film and found that the initial price is not the overriding factor, adds Bartholomay. “If you use a film that decreases your productivity, the cost is significant. It's uneconomical to use cheaper film. Our challenge is to find those market niches that allow customers to user higher added-value, higher innovation films.”

Higher costs for Toray, as well as its customers, have been an immediate new challenge recently. The company announced price increases on both its PP and PET films in June but also has installed an electrical co-generation plant for the polyester operation to help cut its energy costs.

“The ultimate answer is the one we've talked about all along: innovative films,” says Bartholomay. Such materials let packagers use 45-gauge PP rather than 50- or 60-gauge, for example, or use mono-web PETs where two- or three-layer constructions had been the norm.

“That's real economy, not nickel-and-diming the resin cost down. You're instead making a quantum leap in terms of performance and structures. I think that's the future.”

Read an expanded version of this article at www.convertingmagzine.com