On Sept. 15, a new processing line was fully incorporated into the production process of the Geohellas plant in Grevena, Greece.
The new milling and classifying line, together with the necessary storage and material handling equipment, represents a total investment of 1.5 million euro, financed 100% by the shareholders.
With the addition of the new equipment, the plant can now reach an annual capacity of 160, 000 MT. The additional capacity became absolutely necessary: the existing milling line for powder products was almost exhausted this year, due to the huge increase in the volumes of Bleaching Earths sales.
In a short statement during the inauguration of the new line, the CEO of Geohellas said, “Our MAK® series Bleaching Earths have been recognized as one of the most efficient nonacid activated bleaching earths in the market. This successful paradigm shift in bleaching, designed and executed by our technical sales team, led to an increase of sales of over 150% since last year. The new investment not only gives us the extra capacity needed to serve our customers on time, but also allows us to produce new, improved products.”
The new line consists of storage facilities (silos) for semi-processed material, automated feeding, milling, drying, classification, storage of the finished products and feeding the various packaging lines.
It can process calcined and non-calcined material and can work in parallel with the existing lines, increasing not only the capacity but also the flexibility of the plant.
Different granulometries can be achieved and the minimum batches can be smaller due to the automation of the system. Therefore, smaller special customer needs can be met easily.
The milling technology employed, in conjunction with the various upstream and downstream processes, facilitates the production of a wider range of products and increases their main properties, such as absorption efficiency.
With the addition of this equipment, Geohellas can now apply any of the four major grinding/milling/size-reducing technologies to produce the desired particle size and particle size distribution.
Finally, the new line releases capacity in the existing pulverizing line (impact mill/jet mill) proving the opportunity to expand in markets of other technical products.
