KUHNE Group Description
The extruder development of KUHNE Group goes far back to the year 1949. Out of the disorders from the Second World War, resulted the first approach to design and build a machine, able to melt plastic.
In 1959 Walter Kuhne became the first general manager of the Battenfeld extrusion site located in Siegburg. In the end of the sixties Walter Kuhne took the chance to use a Management Buy Out in order to get possession of the extrusion facilities and to rename the company into KUHNE GmbH.
Already in the year 1956, sheet lines for the production of PC had been delivered – also first tests with PE-sheets were realized. In the thermoforming business, still very young at that time, first machines have been sold in the sixties for the production of PS and PVC.
In the seventies, KUHNE GmbH developed for example the first coextrusion-line for milk and stripes film, where up to four extruder produce different colours side by side into one blown film. An additional milestone for KUHNE was reached by placing HDPE extrusion lines in the market in the eighties. More than 500 of these lines – most of them built on rotating platforms – were sold. The first huge lines with working widths up to four meter and thicknesses up to 30 mm were developed, sold and delivered.
The nineties for KUHNE were dominated by coextrusion blown film lines – becoming more and more big and powerful – as well as the ongoing development regarding multi-layer feed block systems for flat film and sheet lines. Outputs were continuously raised and layer thicknesses more and more reduced; in the same time tolerances minimized.
In the first decade of the new millennium, the number of delivered blown film lines for five and seven layer has been rising. In Flat Film extrusion, KUHNE presented the High Speed concept – a system that almost doubled outputs by keeping the extruder size at the same time.
From 1949 until today, thousands of KUHNE lines and machines are running all over the world – still rising constantly. Innovations – such as the “Triple Bubble Principle” for the production of biaxial stretched film with excellent barrier properties and up to thirteen layers – as well as the “Water Quench Principle” with its high performance water cooling ring, continue to change the world of packaging significantly.
Today KUHNE Group is one of the foremost European engineering companies in the field of film and sheet extrusion. Four autonomous companies - KUHNE Maschinenbau GmbH, KUHNE Anlagenbau GmbH, K-Tool GmbH and KUHNE North America Corp. - are united under the roof of the KUHNE Group to meet all the criteria required for a modern manufacturer of extrusion systems.
This is how the story of success reveals and continues, that started after the end of world war 2 with the manufacturing of the first extruder…
Since 2010 until today, KUHNE has installed more than 20 flat film lines for the production of coffee capsules. The heart of these machines, which are producing in six different countries, is the KUHNE patented and own developed lamella feed block. It allows a perfect layer distribution with an extraordinary barrier effect and in the same time lowest tolerances. Smart Sheet has been improving that feed block system continuously.
Every year we are building and delivering 2 – 3 machines for the production of geomembrane films, with net widths up to 8,500 mm, output rates up to 4 tons per hour and thickness tolerances below 1%. Even the huge die for these lines is KUHNE-made.
In the special segment of extrusion coating, KUHNE has installed the line with the biggest width worldwide. This machine produces reinforced net films, to bring together net and film inline in one single process, is a huge advantage.