In order to continue its outstanding achievements of recent years, Dunlop Conveyor Belting in The Netherlands is making the biggest single investment in its history, totaling some 6.4 million euros. The new investments are designed to increase current capacity as well as adding a brand new product to its already comprehensive range of rubber multi-ply belting.
The first phase, costing some 2.5 million euros, is to add a new, 12-meter long ‘double-daylight’ press to its existing 7 presses and 2 rotocures. The new press will produce rolls of up to 4 meters in diameter (20 tonnes) at a width of up to 1400mm. Director of production, Michiel Eijpe, says that the press will be at least twice as efficient as current presses. “We urgently need to improve our capacity, particularly our ability to make more 800 to 1400mm wide belts,” explains Michiel. “Increasing capacity also means that we can further reduce lead times for our customers, which will give us yet another edge over our competitors”.
The second part of the program is an investment of 3.9 million euros to build a new, 100-meter long production hall on the existing site. Here they plan to install a steelcord production line that will be linked to press 7, which itself was only installed as recently as 2009. The new production line will be used to produce steelcord belting for the first time ever in Drachten. Although production of steelcord belts is not expected to begin before September next year, Sales and marketing director Andries Smilda already has eyes on winning new market share. “This will create a whole new dimension to our sales efforts. A great many of our customers use steelcord as well as rubber multi-ply belting so we have a ready-made target market to attack. We will be able to make widths up to 1600mm in a market currently dominated by the likes of Semperit and Contitech”.
Up until now, supplies of steelcord belting for their existing customers have largely been produced by Fenner USA. “Although the quality is excellent ” explains Andries, “The limitation on sales is mostly due to the shipping costs from North America, which puts us at an immediate price disadvantage. With our own steelcord production located in Europe we will be able to be much more aggressive and responsive”. With such ambitious plans, the future continues to look strong for Dunlop Conveyor Belting.
