Great success for the opening of the new Bandera R&D centre, on May 8, during Plast 2015. The ribbon cutting ceremony was attended by Giorgio Colombo, the president of Assocomaplast (the Italian plastics and rubber processing machinery and moulds manufacturers’ Association of which Bandera is a member), Roberto Maroni, the president of Lombardy Region, Giorgio Zanzi, the prefect of Varese district, Gianluigi Farioli, the mayor of Busto Arsizio, and other authorities, in addition to the press, Italian and international customers, partners and Bandera staff. This new facility further consolidates the extremely strong bond between technological research and concrete application that has always characterised Bandera’s approach to business.

The owners Piero and Franco Bandera, together with some representatives of the staff and the institutional authorities, cut the inauguration ribbon of the new area: 3,000 new square meters dedicated to research and development, with annexed offices’ building to host customers and the possibility to organise in-house workshops and open houses. A 4 million euros investment, over 70 million euros revenue in 2014 and an annual growing trend of 5% for 2015-2017 period, 90% of its business volume being well-established on foreign markets, 170 employees and a growing employment rate. These are some the most meaningful numbers about Bandera, whose focus is strongly set on the continuous technological research and on new solutions development, appreciating the human capital value.

In the new R&D area the manufacturer displayed: one line for 7-layer blown film co-extrusion for thermo-lamination and also for barrier-film flexible packaging; two lines equipped with flat die technology for the production of PET, PLA and PP rigid or semi-expanded film for thermoformed rigid packaging and FFS (Form-Fill-Seal) industry.

With this new facility, Bandera proves itself as an extrusion centre of excellence in Europe, focusing on the search for highly innovative ideas and on the development of new implementations that maximize technological progress in plastics processing, intercepting the trends of food and industrial packaging. To promote sustainable technology and industrial processes aimed at granting the lowest energy consumption, at facilitating recycled or biodegradable materials processing and at reducing packaging weight. Such is the mission of an Italian company with a long tradition that has been on the market for almost 70 years and has a strong aptitude for innovation which brought it to become one of the undisputed benchmark for the whole industry.