KHS expands its Kleve site: additional assembly shop blessed

A new building signifies permanent expansion at KHS GmbH's packaging machine plant in Kleve, Germany, where the company recently held a topping-out ceremony and had its new assembly shop blessed. The manufacturer of filling and packaging systems is very excited about the additional 2,500 m2 in capacity it will gain, as recently space has been tight.

"The new shop impressively proves how high the demand is for our products from Kleve," smiles Prof. Dr.-Ing. Matthias Niemeyer, chairman of the KHS Executive Management Board. "We're very pleased with the continuing growth of this production site throughout the entire KHS Group." In the past few years alone business in Kleve has grown on average by more than 10% per annum. A similar trend is emerging for 2016.

Capacities bundled at the site
In the town of Kleve (English Cleves) on the Lower Rhine KHS manufactures packaging systems for food and beverage producers from all over the world. With the expansion the systems provider is again bundling capacities on its own factory premises. To date the plant had 13 staging areas for final assembly and system testing; owing to its considerable growth, however, the manufacturer no longer had enough assembly space at its disposal. "When running at peak capacity we always had to rent out shop space in the neighborhood," reports Norbert Pastoors, head of the Packaging Product Division at KHS, "and in the last two years we even had this extra space permanently booked."

The external workstations meant a lot of extra work: on the one hand, transporting the complex machine components from one site to another presented ever greater logistical challenges; on the other, assembly conditions at the rented sites were improvised and not linked in to the company's own, optimized infrastructure and in-house facilities. "The new shop not only saves us a lot of time but also money – to the tune of about €200,000 a year," says Pastoors happily.

Seven extra staging areas for assembly and acceptance testing
The new assembly shop will permanently provide additional final assembly and testing bays for Kleve’s products which are very successful on the market, giving the factory a total of 20 final assembly workstations. KHS is thus expanding on its own company site; it was not necessary to buy up extra land.

Production at the new shop in Kleve is to start in August. KHS held a topping-out ceremony during its traditional family afternoon, with all company employees, retired KHS personnel and the craftsmen involved in the project invited. Deacon Michael Rübo, managing director of the Karl und Maria Kisters Stiftung, performed the official blessing ceremony following speeches given by Sonja Northing, mayor of Kleve, and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Matthias Niemeyer.