Cuban Vice President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez Durante visited a new packaging plant outside the provincial capital of Pinar del Río, where the latest technology is been installed to manufacture foldable boxes.
Destined to primarily serve the pharmaceutical industry, the plant should begin operations in the second half of 2016, and will subsequently be expanded.
Anabel Rodríguez Vera, general coordinator for the state enterprise GEOCUBA in the province, which is carrying out the project, explained that in its first year the plant is expected to produce some 183 million cardboard pill boxes and pouches in a variety of formats, adding that the planned expansion should allow for the production of 437 million units annually, by 2018.
The investment should be recuperated, she said, within four years, as a result of savings produced by the substitution of Cuban made products for previously imported packaging.
Rodríguez additionally reported that the plant will also be capable of manufacturing packaging for the food processing and cosmetics industries.
Accompanying the Vice President were Gladys Martínez Verdecia, first secretary of the Party in Pinar del Río, and Ernesto Barreto Castillo, president of the Provincial Assembly of People’s Power.
(Granma)