By Michael Lauzon
CORRESPONDENT
Published: April 11, 2014 12:47 pm ET
Updated: April 11, 2014 12:49 pm ET
Biaxially oriented polypropylene film equipment in Belleville, Ontario, formerly run by ExxonMobil Chemical Co. will be auctioned May 1.
The BOPP film operation was not included in a sale of ExxonMobil Chemical’s global BOPP business to Jindal Poly Films Ltd. of New Delhi, India. A sales agreement between the two companies was announced in October 2012 and Jindal completed the purchase last year. ExxonMobil Chemical said in 2012 that the Belleville plant was its highest cost BOPP operation.
Hilco Industrial of Grand Rapids, Mich., will conduct the auction live and online. Auctioneer Schneider Industries Inc. of St. Louis will work with Hilco on the auction.
Key assets include two BOPP lines with 260 inch nominal width. The lines have Bruckner machine direction orientation sections and Marshall & Williams transverse direction orientation systems. A Hilco spokesman said the BOPP lines can be purchased entire or on a component basis. The facility is not for sale but space in it is available for lease.
A Leybold Topmet vacuum metallizer and Kataoka sheet slitting line are other major pieces of equipment. Grinders, dust collectors, silos, drive motors, pallet storage systems and a range of supporting equipment are also part of the sale.
Jindal acquired Houston -based ExxonMobil Chemical BOPP plants in Shawnee, Okla.; LaGrange, Ga.; Virton, Belgium; Brindisi, Italy; and Kerkrade, Netherlands, and a sales office in Luxembourg. The operations employed about 1,500.
Jindal claims to have global BOPP capacity of 428 million pounds per year. Its biaxially oriented PET film capacity is 254 million pounds per year. It can metallize 127 million pounds per of the films. | 
