KHS barrier technology gets its own hall

Hamburg | The KHS Group is investing over eleven million euros in a new hall for its barrier technology product center. In the future, all Plasmax coating technology departments will be housed under one roof. The building covering around 4300 square meters is to be constructed on new factory premises on Hellmesbergerweg and is due to start operation in spring 2027. With this new production shop, KHS will be optimizing its processes and creating space for further growth.

“Our barrier technology is a key growth driver for the corporate success of the entire KHS Group. The demand for our machines in the InnoPET FreshSafe series has quadrupled over the past five years,” said Kai Acker, CEO of KHS GmbH, at the official ground-breaking ceremony for the new production shop on May 22, 2026.

The factory in Hamburg pools the resources of the PET technology competence center within the KHS Group. A pioneer in PET bottle production, trailblazing systems and solutions that have shaped the beverage and packaging industry world-wide have been engineered here for over 50 years. These include high-performance stretch blow molders in the InnoPET Blomax series, InnoPET BloFill fillers and coating machines featuring Plasmax technology that’s absolutely unique on the market. KHS’ InnoPET FreshSafe blocks coat PET bottles with a wafer-thin, transparent layer of glass in the Plasmax process. This reliably protects sensitive beverages against oxidation and loss of carbon dioxide.

The two product centers for stretch blow molding and barrier technology have so far shared three production shops. Strong growth in the barrier technology segment in particular means that these units have now reached the limits of their capacity. “To make our processes more efficient and increase production, we’re going to combine all relevant departments in a new hall,” explains Dr. Joachim Konrad, head of the Large Machine Product Division at KHS.

Improved assembly and optimized preliminary testing

The benefits here include shorter distances that lighten the load on personnel and optimized processes to encourage close cooperation between the various departments. Assembly will also profit from the new production shop: instead of building entire machines all in one place, employees will be able to mount individual modules in parallel at defined workstations. These will then be assembled to create a full machine and commissioned.

The laboratory area, where KHS tests the coated bottles and develops new coatings and coating types, will be given a new paternoster system. This will enable bottle batches to be automatically stored and retrieved as required using a specific code. And finally, KHS has placed the bottle and temporary storage unit closer to the laboratory and production areas.