The €60 million plant increases the company's production capacity by 150%, and will provide greater competitiveness to the company so as to raise its market share from 7% to 16%. The installation of the third glass-melting furnace is part of the Vidroporto modernisation project, which aims to consolidate its position among the top three companies specialised in glass packaging in Brazil.The newly installed system meets modern standards for the production of glass containers for the food and beverage industries.The production line is composed of a raw material batch plant, glass melting furnace, forming machine, annealing lehr, and inspection line.
The furnace has been provided by HORN Glass Industries AG and can produce on average 42 million bottles per month or 350 tons of glass per day. HORN supplied the complete equipment including refractories, steel and construction supervision for the melting end, distributer end and three forehearths.
The other plant equipment has been supplied by the partners of HORN within the Glass Alliance for Container glass: Zippe, Bucher Emhart Glass and MSK. The cooperation of the Glass Alliance partners is a major advantage for the investors with regard to technical optimisation of the plant, smooth course of actions and limitation of financial risks. The interfaces of the individual assembly sections at the hot and cold ends are managed internally by the individual members themselves, assisted by the independent engineering company cm.project.ing GmbH.
The new project of Vidroporto was officially started in July 2013 during a joint kick-off meeting of the four Glass Alliance partners involved together with Vidroporto and cm.project.ing. In October 2014 the furnace where put in operation and produce now very good glass quality with energy less than 850 kcal/kg.