Company Announcement - Unilever officially opened its Indonsa factory expansion after a R511-million investment.  The expansion forms part of Unilever’s R3 billion “Capacity Transformation Project” (CTP) and Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan.  This investment increases the Indonsa factory’s manufacturing capacity to 100 000 tons, which will be fully utilised beyond 2020, while reducing its carbon footprint to a total of 41 tons.  Skills training of 130 factory workers will ensure world-class operations. Says Paul Polman, Global CEO, Unilever:  “This expansion makes the Indonsa site the largest Savoury Factory in the Unilever world by volume.  The site will achieve this growth whilst maintaining the flexibility to accommodate both the complex savoury portfolio and aggressive innovation agenda linked to the growth.”

The CTP, known as Ingede, was signed off in September 2013 and is now fully operational, consisting primarily of four key technical areas:

• Mixing Capacity Expansion: The installation and commissioning of three additional 4m3 Dry Powder Amixon mixers.  These mixers are twice the size of the current three mixers and will be primarily dosed directly from bulk silos.
• Automated Bulk Material Supply: The installation and commissioning of 16 Bulk silos (6x75m³ and 10x30m³) and a pneumatic conveying system to dose the bulk materials directly from silo to the new mixers.  This system is designed to provide both supply buffer and unconstrained mixer operation.
• Reconfiguration of design and operation of Indonsa site warehouse: The current storage of material will be moved off site along with the conversion of the onsite warehouse to a just-in-time facility, to supply daily call-off from packing and manufacturing halls.  This is required due to insufficient storage space in the warehouse for volume growth. Moreover, this will allow expansion to the manufacturing facility within the current building footprint.
• Integrated Material Flow Management: The total integrated site management systems will be upgraded in order to: manage, execute and monitor site operations required for the growth.  The sub-systems will include elements such as dynamic plant scheduling, semi-finished goods management, line material call-off and key decision flow and impact management.

Adds Mr Polman:  “While we invest in world class factories, we continue to invest in our people that drive our success. The Indonsa team is driven by core values that ensure that they are empowered and believe that success can be achieved by collaboration and teamwork.”