Macro Engineering is pleased to announce the sale of its third CXL-7210 cast barrier film line in less than a year to the company Selena Ltd. from the city of Korolev, near Moscow in Russia. The city, named after the famous space scientist Sergey Korolev, is home to Russia's space program. Korolev is to Russia what Houston is to the U.S.A.

Mr. Anatoly Bondaruk, General Manager for Selena Ltd. indicated that the purchase of Macro's CXL-7210 makes business sense for Russia and his company. "Food packaging in Russia is developing rapidly and the demand for high quality barrier film is increasing. We opted for the cast film process instead of blown film because we need to produce next generation barrier films. Blown film simply does not provide the properties that our customers are currently looking for in barrier films."

The CXL-7210 is a 7-layer, 2.4 meter wide cast barrier film line designed to produce 2.1-meter wide barrier films from 35 to 250 microns using PP, PA and EVOH. Structures containing PVDC are also possible, as an option, with the use of encapsulation. The CXL-7210 line includes nine extruders: seven for each of the seven layers plus two for encapsulating the two edges. If PVDC encapsulation is used, the melt stream of one of the tie layer extruders is diverted for that purpose.

Felix Guberman, Macro's Area Sales Manager for Russia, shared some interesting background on the sale of the line. "One of the deciding factors for our customer to buy the CXL-7210 line was our commitment to training," explained Guberman. "Selena Ltd. has limited expertise in barrier films. The fact that they are located in Korolev allows them to tap a qualified pool of engineers, technicians and operators. These people have aerospace experience but not coextrusion experience. Macro's successful track record of training customers in the coextrusion of multilayer barrier films was an important selling feature for our line."

Adolfo Edgar, Macro's Marketing Manager, explains that a new trend is developing in the market for barrier films. "The market for high end barrier films is moving in the direction of cast. We see the next generation barrier films being produced by cast and not the blown film process. Customers are looking closely at the unique properties offered by cast barrier films. Some, who recently invested in blown film have gone as far as mentioning that, in hindsight, their investment should have been in cast film," says Edgar. "The optical properties, gauge uniformity, flatness and thermoformability achieved by cast are simply unattainable with the blown film process. For example, high clarity glossy structures with PP in the outer layer for deep draw forming applications simply cannot be replicated with blown film."