Herma: New production facility for self-adhesive materials

460 piles, 300 concrete mixers, and three 60 metre cranes

• The new coating plant, which is taking shape now, presents special challenges for civil engineers and building technology
• The façades are scheduled to be finished in autumn 2018; commissioning of the production technology will follow in autumn 2019.
• HERMA will proceed to expand their annual production capacities for self-adhesive materials by 50 percent to 1.2 billion square metres – that is approximately the size of New York City.

With the inauguration of the new coating plant at its Filderstadt headquarters, HERMA will extend their production capacities for self-adhesive materials by 50 percent from now 800 million square metres to 1.2 billion square metres. That is approximately the size of New York City. The first test runs of coating technology and material handling, which will be robot-assisted for the first time, are scheduled to take place in summer 2019. “The new plant will enable us to produce new self-adhesive materials, and particularly to extend our portfolio in the film-based materials sector, which is experiencing fast growth”, stresses Managing Director Dr. Thomas Baumgärtner, who also heads the Self-adhesive Materials Division. The new part of the company is already taking visible shape. The construction process is pushing people and materials alike to the extreme – with regard to both height and depth. The complete building will, for instance, be erected on a total of 460 special piles sunk into the ground to a depth of more than 12 m due to the ground conditions. “We faced the challenge of a stream causing silty ground with a limited load-bearing capacity, especially towards the North side of the area”, explains Dr. Thomas Baumgärtner. There was no alternative to a very elaborate foundation based completely on piles.

Heavy prefabricated pillars

For technical reasons, the shell construction company had to create two casting segments for the reinforced concrete floor slab with a thickness of 120 cm that will house the new high bay warehouse for raw materials. Extremely dense, close-mesh reinforcement layers were used since loads exceeding 20 tons per square metre will later occur there. This, in turn, forced the shell construction company to use different grain sizes for the gravel concrete aggregate, in order to prevent the reinforcement mesh from acting as a sieve that segregates the concrete. In total, this required the contents of 300 concrete mixer trucks. For logistical reasons, the 35-metre-high prefabricated pillars for the high bay warehouse were also delivered in two parts. The lower part of each pillar alone weighed nearly 40 tons. Framed by three tower cranes measuring up to 60 m, special cranes put the pillars into their massive, garage-sized sleeve foundations inch by inch. The new coating plant consists of five building sections: the central warehouse for raw materials and semi-finished products, the coating machine hall with two production facilities, a two-floor wing with cutting and packaging systems on the upper level and the shipping area below, a finished goods warehouse, and a social/technical building.

Total investment of approximately 100 million Euros

Dr. Thomas Baumgärtner expects the façades to be finished in autumn 2018, and regular production to start in late 2019. Since an innovative energy concept is being implemented, the new part of the company will be able to run its production fully independent of the existing HERMA location. On the new HERMA premises, the labelling machines production facility is currently also under construction. According to plan, it will be put into operation as early as late 2018, when this HERMA division moves from its current location in Deizisau to Filderstadt. Until late 2019, HERMA will invest a total of approximately 100 million Euros in production facilities and buildings on the new premises.