Portola Packaging

Solutions to assist production relocations in a Global marketplace.

We were originally contacted by Portola Packaging in the Summer of 2008 to discuss the dust extraction requirements for their clinical closures production line which they were considering relocating from Woonsocket, USA to Louny, Czech Republic.

After presenting our initial concept along with budgetary costings Portola were given the confidence that should they proceed with their relocation then they knew a company with the expertise to ensure workplace dust emissions would not be a concern.

In Spring 2009 Portola got back in touch with us to confirm they would be going ahead with the relocation and wanted us to confirm our proposals for extracting the dust laden air. One concern that was raised is that with temperatures dipping to -30°C during the Winter in the Czech Republic they didn’t want to waste valuable heat by exhausting the extracted air to atmosphere and therefore we developed our solution to provide for the filtered air to be returned back into the workplace. This in-turn raised the problem that during the Summer the temperature can exceed 35°C and therefore there was not only the need to have the control to potentially exhaust some of the extracted air to atmosphere but also a requirement to provide some cooling to the return air.

Our final solution incorporated a filtered dust extraction system which returned the air back into the workplace but was also fitted with an external controllable air ‘bleed’ to allow for some of the returned air to be exhausted to atmosphere and a cooling coil within the main return air ductwork internally.

The complete system was installed during a two week period in September 2009 by Western Air Ducts (UK) installation engineers ahead of schedule and in time for the client to begin production trials at the beginning of October.