The management of Sumitomo (SHI) Demag also sees strong partnerships as essential for continuing success in the packaging industry. "The requirements of packaging manufacturers are just as diverse as the spectrum of available packaging. This can only be produced in optimised manufacturing cells with innovative and specialised development partners," emphasises CEO Dr. Tetsuya Okamura. "In addition to optimising the injection moulding machine, our role is mainly to assemble all components to form an efficient and complete system," he continues.
Competent partners are needed for the development of functional packaging solutions that can be produced at low cost. The machine manufacturer plays an important role here as system integrator, as Arthur Kramer of the Sales Back Office at Sumitomo (SHI) Demag, explained in his presentation. Together with partners from the fields of automation, moulds and auxiliaries, this supplier is developing tailor-made and integrated solutions for the packaging industry.
One of these partners, for instance, is Schöttli AG of Diessenhofen in Switzerland whose core competence is high-performance moulds for the packaging industry and medical technology. In his presentation on system partnerships for international markets, Stefan Gaul, Product Manager for Packaging at Schöttli, highlighted the benefits resulting from the international orientation of the Schöttli Group. Schöttli AG is the core company of the Mould Technologies Group (MTG) which was formed in 2008 and is headquartered in Diessenhofen. s-mouldtech in Suzhou/China and Magor Mold in San Dimas CA/USA are also owned by MTG. Within the group the three mould makers can provide plastic processors with a broad portfolio of moulds from a single supplier.
Holger Kast, Sales Manager at Marbach moulds & automation GmbH from Bad Urach, reported on innovation and trends in the field of mould construction and IML. The partner company of Sumitomo (SHI) Demag, which specialises in injection moulds for thin-walled packaging and IML automation, brought along a complete novelty to Schwaig in the form of full-cover labelling.
The special feature of this new in-mould labelling process is that the banner label and the base label are inserted overlapping around a radius, thus completely covering the plastic surface with the label right up to the edge of the seal. For this full labelling Marbach has developed a process where a "Full Cover Label Placer“ inserts the banner label and the base label in one stroke. In addition to the informative presentation, the visitors at the Market Segment Meeting were also able to experience the new process live in a manufacturing cell centred on an El-Exis SP 200.
Sumitomo (SHI) Demag had developed further production solutions for the packaging industry and medical technology in conjunction with two Swiss companies, Kebo and Schöttli, and the French partners Collomb and Machines Pagès. These were on display at the Technical Centre.
