With the founding of a joint venture in South Korea, Dutch aerosol and pressurised dispenser manufacturer Airopack (Waalwijk; www.airopack.com) said it is working in Asia for the first time.

Airopack plans to continue manufacturing the dispensers at its Waalwijk home facility, and these are to be filled for the local market by the Airodispensing Solutions joint venture in the free trade zone at Changwon, South Korea. The plant is scheduled to come online this spring.

“The packaging market in South Korea is growing quickly,” said Tae Kim, CEO of Airodispensing Solutions and a JV partner.

The pressurised Dispensers, partially made of PET, and of recycled PET since 2021, work with normal air instead of propellants. They are used for packaging cosmetics and household products. Annual production capacity at Waalwijk is currently 150 mn dispensers.

Airopack had to file for insolvency in February 2022 and was restarted in April 2022 as "Airopack International B.V." by a joint venture of the Swiss investment company Axiom Partners (Cham; www.axiompartners.eu) and the Dutch PIPM - Platinum Industrial Plant & Machinery (Bloemendaal; www.pipm.eu). About 30 of the original 45 jobs have been retained. The company is managed by CEO Maarten Kool.