CertainTeed Roofing in Oxford, North Carolina, broke ground in November on the construction of a new state-of-the-art glass mat plant. The facility will be used for the highly efficient production of glass mat, a key component in the manufacture of roofing shingles. With a total investment of $167 million, this is CertainTeed Roofing's largest investment to date in a U.S. site. The company has contracted Voith to supply the production machine as well as automation and digitalization solutions from Voith´s Papermaking 4.0 portfolio. The plant is scheduled to go into operation in 2024.
"Building this plant in Oxford is an important step in continuing to provide industry-leading service to our customers," says Carmen Bodden, Vice President of CertainTeed Roofing. "Our goal with this plant is to set new industry standards – utilizing state-of-the-art energy and water conservation technologies and innovative automation technology."
"We are very pleased to take this important corporate step together with Voith," emphasizes Pedro Romero, General Manager Glass Mat at CertainTeed Roofing. "Voith's long-standing expertise and experience in glass mat machines will be the foundation for achieving our corporate goals with the new glass mat plant in North Carolina. Voith offers the most comprehensive full-line portfolio on the market with highly efficient cutting edge technologies and records excellent references in both the paper and nonwovens industries."
As the leading full-line supplier, Voith supplies not only the stock preparation, but also the approach flow system and HydroFormer, as well as the binder section including binder preparation. The FiberDry from Voith is used for drying and curing the glass mat web impregnated in resin. To reduce primary energy demand, Voith implements a heat recovery system that enables energy savings of up to 10 percent. For the most efficient production possible, CertainTeed Roofing will also rely on the automation and digitalization solutions of Voith's Papermaking 4.0 portfolio. The Voith IIoT platform dataPARC cloud serves as the basis. The quality control system (QCS) OnQuality provides complete control over production processes and product quality by giving operators full transparency. In addition, the condition monitoring system OnCare.Health continuously analyzes machine data to reduce planned and unplanned downtime.
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