Henkel’s modernised Packaging Competence Center in Düsseldorf, Germany, is designed to advance innovation and sustainability in the flexible packaging sector.
The modernisation follows Henkel’s strategic partnership with Nordmeccanica, a manufacturer of coating, laminating, and metallising machinery, announced in May 2025, with Nordmeccanica acting as the primary technology contractor for the project.
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Opened in May 2026, the upgraded centre offers Henkel’s customers and partners a dedicated setting to design, trial, and scale packaging solutions, with a focus on accelerating development processes, enhancing process efficiency, and improving environmental performance.
Need for modernisation of Henkel’s Packaging Competence Center
The packaging sector is experiencing significant and accelerating change. New and tightening sustainability rules, including the EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) and the extended producer responsibility (EPR) in the US, are increasing compliance demands.
Concurrently, consumers are putting greater pressure on brands to adopt recyclable, circular formats while manufacturers are raising investment in digitalisation and automation. Together, these aspects are altering how packaging is developed, manufactured and collected for recovery, requiring quicker innovation and closer coordination across the industry.
Coating technologies are expected to support the shift towards mono-material packaging formats designed to enhance recyclability.
Henkel’s Packaging Competence Center helps to address these challenges by supporting the development of recyclable packaging structures and the increased use of more sustainable materials.
Henkel Packaging Competence Center’s modernisation details
Henkel’s Packaging Competence Center is designed to drive the development of adhesives and coatings for plastic and paper substrates, along with recyclable mono-material packs, flexible formats, speciality tapes and labels.
It also supports Henkel’s activities spanning its full range of adhesive and coating technologies, including solvent-free, water-based, solvent-based, and coating formulations.
The upgraded facility supports customers in conducting rapid testing and advancing recyclable packaging solutions to market. It enables customers to trial adhesive and coating formulations under realistic process parameters, assess their suitability for industrial deployment, and support subsequent scale-up.
The project involved the installation of new advanced equipment to create a practical test environment that mirrors current high-specification production conditions.
In addition, Henkel expanded its testing area for pressure-sensitive adhesive applications within the same building. This laboratory zone is equipped with coating systems alongside ultraviolet (UV) activation and measurement technologies.
Through its integration with Henkel’s adjacent Inspiration Centre Düsseldorf (ICD), the Packaging Competence Center also provides customers with access to development, testing, industrial validation, recycling analysis, and training services in a single location.
With a floor area of 47,000m² (505,903ft²), the ICD accommodates 30 laboratories, four technology centres and more than 650 Henkel experts.
Equipment installed at Henkel Packaging Competence Center
Henkel’s modernised Packaging Competence Center is equipped with two Nordmeccanica machines, the Super Combi 5000 and the Super Simplex SL e800, which offer a comprehensive selection of standard lamination and coating techniques used across the flexible packaging industry.
Both machines are fully digital and include online coating-weight measurement systems to support systematic data collection and process control. When used with five flexibly deployable application trolleys, they form a gearless flexographic coating unit.
The Super Combi 5000 is specified with a mechanical speed of 450m/min, web widths of 1,100mm-1,500mm, and a reel diameter of 1,000mm.
The machine can be configured for multiple coating and laminating applications, including solvent-less, solvent-based, water-based, UV and electron beam (EB) processes, single-colour printing, water- or solvent-based lacquering, and registered coating on pre-printed substrates.
The Super Simplex SL e800 is a solvent-less laminator designed for digital printing workflows. It also operates at a mechanical speed of 450m/min, with an 800mm web width and a reel diameter of 1,000mm. The facility is also equipped with Nordson CW 9000 compact coating weight gauge, which delivers highly accurate readings of adhesive coating weight and mix ratio, supporting precise control in flexible packaging production.
