09.03.08
A Bavarian success story
Any number of successful businesses were started in a garage, but Helmut Schreiner, head of the $150 million Schreiner Group, goes one better. He started off in the family washroom next to his father’s small print shop, mixing glue in the bathtub amid the ruins of post-war Germany. Taking over from his father in the 1960s, he built the company up to become one of Germany’s top label converters. Today the group has diversified into a wide range of technical and security labeling technologies, and just recently into light-emitting substrates used in automobile interiors, office buildings and even in the Shoah Memorial in Berlin.
This year the Schreiner Group won the prestigious Innovator of the Year Award (a German industry prize), and also opened its first plant outside Germany, in Blauvelt, NY, USA. The new 50,000 square foot US production line, part of Schreiner Group’s Medipharm Division, will make specialty peel-off labels, combination hanger labels, brand protection and RFID products, expanded content labels, and syringe labels. A significant proportion of the machinery for the new US plant was manufactured and delivered by French narrow web machinery manufacturer SMAG, one of the few European equipment makers successfully installing presses in North America despite adverse economic and exchange rate conditions. The equipment for this first phase of Schreiner’s international expansion comprises two-color, three-color and six-color roll-to-roll Galaxie screen presses, all in 350mm (14") web widths.
Any number of successful businesses were started in a garage, but Helmut Schreiner, head of the $150 million Schreiner Group, goes one better. He started off in the family washroom next to his father’s small print shop, mixing glue in the bathtub amid the ruins of post-war Germany. Taking over from his father in the 1960s, he built the company up to become one of Germany’s top label converters. Today the group has diversified into a wide range of technical and security labeling technologies, and just recently into light-emitting substrates used in automobile interiors, office buildings and even in the Shoah Memorial in Berlin.
This year the Schreiner Group won the prestigious Innovator of the Year Award (a German industry prize), and also opened its first plant outside Germany, in Blauvelt, NY, USA. The new 50,000 square foot US production line, part of Schreiner Group’s Medipharm Division, will make specialty peel-off labels, combination hanger labels, brand protection and RFID products, expanded content labels, and syringe labels. A significant proportion of the machinery for the new US plant was manufactured and delivered by French narrow web machinery manufacturer SMAG, one of the few European equipment makers successfully installing presses in North America despite adverse economic and exchange rate conditions. The equipment for this first phase of Schreiner’s international expansion comprises two-color, three-color and six-color roll-to-roll Galaxie screen presses, all in 350mm (14") web widths.