Setting the standard for production machinery OLBRICH

Setting the Standard

for production machinery

New orders from Russia this year confirm the position of Germany’s OLBRICH as the market leader in machinery for the production of wallpaper, floor coverings, films and technical textiles.

At the beginning of 2020, OLBRICH GmbH, the specialist in machinery for the production of wallpaper, floor coverings, films/foils and technical textiles received an order from ARTEKS, one of the leading manufacturers of wallpaper in Russia. Arteks, which is based in St Petersburg, already operates five Olbrich lines for the production of modern wallpaper. The sixth coating and printing line was ordered to enable the company to increase its annual production volume to up to 24 million rolls.

The new order includes a 10-colour screen/gravure-printing line with a production speed of 50 to 70 m/min. A register embossing machine and an additional scatter coating for special surface effects round off the new wallpaper line. The standard working width is 1,200 mm. The new production line has now been delivered and put into operation.

For over 70 years Olbrich has been setting standards in the wallcoverings industry with its innovative production facilities. This continuous innovation has made it the largest supplier of machines for this particular industry today. In the last twelve years alone, its engineers and process specialists have implemented hundreds of projects - including more than 60 combined printing systems for the pan-European wallcoverings industry.

Floor coverings line

This year Olbrich also completed an order from another Russian company - a leading manufacturer of floor coverings. This challenging project was to deliver a new coating and laminating line for the production of heterogeneous floor coverings with a working width of up to 4,100 mm. For the first time, a new process technology, which Olbrich developed exclusively together with this customer, was used for this customer-specific line. In total, up to 30 million m²/year of heterogeneous floor covering can now be produced on the line at production speeds of up to 30 m/min.

Despite the current COVID19 conditions and restrictions, Olbrich was able to complete the order for the new complete line on schedule. Due to the travel and hygiene restrictions, however, only one Olbrich employee was actually on site during the commissioning but the company’s specialists were present during the acceptance runs and were also available, throughout the project, in virtual meetings, telephone conferences and live online support.

It is this kind of close cooperation with its customers in the floor coverings industry that has gained Olbrich such a world-wide reputation. Its machinery experts implement systems for each of a customer’s process steps, from multi-layer product construction through surface finishing to the winding or packing of ready-to-sell floor covering rolls or tiles.

Seventy years of innovation

OLBRICH GmbH is a leading manufacturer of customized designed and manufactured production equipment for coating and laminating lines as well as single machines. OLBRICH serves the wallcovering, flooring and technical textiles industries and also the paper, film and foil converting industry in Europe and worldwide. It has been operating successfully on the market since 1949 and is now, together with Polytype Converting GmbH and R+S Technik GmbH, part of the OLBRICH Group

Olbrich’s mechanical engineering specialists have constantly been dealing with the latest technical solutions from the most diverse

applications. Today more than 900 employees belong to OLBRICH GmbH, which has its headquarters in Bocholt, Germany and further locations in Holoubkov, Czech Republic and Jiangyin, China. Its highly qualified employees and engineers are able to deliver the best possible technological solutions for its customers’ projects as well as support from its own technical centre and an international network of service and sales partners.

The company’s technical centres in Germany and Switzerland and five different pilot plants drive the company’s innovations. They provide proven knowledge on planned investments under production conditions and are the perfect complement for the engineering competence offered by Olbrich. Today, many hundreds of customers on all continents produce wallpaper, floor coverings, films/foils and technical textiles with OLBRICH reliable plants and machines.

Coating systems

At the end of 2019, Olbrich received a contract for a lacquering line from a well-known German producer of panel-shaped materials for facades. It is supplying state-of-the-art technology for the production line including drives & controls and complete Scada system.

The new line is characterised by the implementation of a roll-coating system and is used for one-sided coating of special papers. In addition, the line includes Olbrich’s highly effective CTS-TP nozzles, which are a unique selling point in the market and have meanwhile established themselves worldwide as the benchmark in drying technology. The working width is up to 2,200 mm and on-site production will run continuously. The production capacity of this coating line will be up to 12 million square meters per year.

A defect-free surface finish and high-precision registration controls are special features of Olbrich printing and coating systems. Its machines offer flexible coating units for forward and reverse operation, direct and indirect coating as well as trolley systems for fast product changes with the shortest possible changeover times. In addition, powerful and economical intermediate ovens and main dryers ensure high system speeds for high-quality results. Thanks to Olbrich state-of-the-art machine concepts, it is today the market leader in the field of lacquering lines for automotive films. n