News & Stories - 06/01/2020

Building success together

The HSM Hauni Straw Maker has been producing environmentally friendly paper drinking straws for Matrix Pack, the European market leader, near Athens since December. Production started up smoothly and underlined the rapid success achieved by the Hauni Group in a new market – with the world’s fastest maker of sustainable paper drinking straws.

For Patrick Fricke, Head of Business Development, the Hauni Group’s position as global market leader for machines in the tobacco industry was helpful when making initial contacts in this completely new market. “With the HSM, we are looking beyond the horizons of our industry and opening up a completely new growth market. With seven decades of expertise in mechanical engineering, our impressive track record is a valuable asset when contacting potential customers. Stricter regulations regarding disposable plastic products mean that many manufacturers urgently need high-performance production machines for making drinking straws from environmentally friendly materials.”

Paper is the future

For Matrix Pack, environmentally friendly alternative raw materials have played a key role for some time. After Fricke and his team had presented the unique technological features of the HSM, Matrix Pack and Hauni decided to join forces in a strategic partnership in June 2019. Their goal – to develop a revolutionary new product for the paper straw market. “Our straw maker produces high-quality, biodegradable drinking straws at speeds this market has never seen before. They are food-safe and made from only one type of paper with minimal use of glue,” says Tobias Nick, an HSM expert in Fricke’s team. “Our special and highly efficient process reduces paper consumption and cuts the use of glue by up to 50 percent. Innovative automation standards allow the machine to be controlled by just one operator.

These achievements have convinced Jean-Marc Novene, Head of Business Development at the Matrix Pack Group, that the partnership with Hauni is “a significant step forward in the company’s development. It will enable us to produce sustainable paper drinking straws cost-effectively in Europe using European raw materials and hightech European solutions. Moreover, we are looking to develop this business further in

Hand-in-hand to success

To ensure that the cooperation’s goals became reality as quickly as possible, three Hauni experts were on-site in Athens from the end of September 2019. “As well as setting up and commissioning the HSM within just four weeks, we also ran the necessary training courses at Matrix Pack. Production started up smoothly in December,” reports Jeroom Rössel, from Hauni Technical Customer Service, who was a member of the on-site team. “The constructive partnership with our colleagues from Matrix Pack enabled us to achieve all our goals in terms of schedule and production performance.”

Since March 2020, the HSM near Athens has been producing millions of paper drinking straws at twice the speed of comparable plants. Indeed, production is due to be upgraded to 300 metres per minute in the very near future- “And this is only the beginning,” says Patrick Fricke. “For us, the best confirmation of our straw maker concept is that, in April 2020, Matrix Pack decided to increase its capacity with further HSMs.”

Matrix Pack

Company

As one of Europe's largest manufacturers of drinking straws, the company based in the Greek capital Athens produces all types of drinking straws for industry, household and gastronomy.

Products

Matrix Pack operates three production facilities in two European countries and serves essential segments such as supermarkets, coffee and restaurant chains, wholesalers and milk and juice producers in 32 countries worldwide. With a clear focus on research and development, Matrix Pack relies on innovative products made from environmentally friendly raw materials.