EFI expands business with Niigon PET Preform Machines
Electa Form Industries (EFI) has been a provider of PET preform moulds for over 30 years. They have recently expanded their business to also mould preforms for their customers in their 65,000 square foot facility near Dayton, Ohio. “ We now offer a more complete service for our customers” says Brian Karns, General Manager. EFI is a division of Wentworth Technologies. Wentworth Mold is the largest independent blow mould supplier in North America. “ EFI specialises in the preform side. Within the group we can design and optimise the bottle and the preform. At EFI we can design the preform, build the prototype preform mould and deliver moulded preforms all within three weeks. We can also make recuts to the prototype mould and make revised preforms within two days”. EFI has two small tonnage injection machines for running prototype preforms and an SBO1 to blow bottles in house.
Moulding preforms for their customers has grown to be the largest part of EFI’s business. They have a 24 cavity mould base in which they install different cores and cavities for their various customers. “ Many of our customers do not have enough business today to keep a 24 cavity mould running 24/7” says Max Buchanan, Senior Account manager. We can build a 24 cavity cold half for $80,000 and be moulding at EFI within 7 weeks of ordering”.
With the growth of their moulding business, EFI bought new preform moulding machines. “ We had two preform moulding machines in house, and last year we needed to add a 300 ton machine” says Karns. ”We chose Niigon, and we are so pleased with it that we just received our second Niigon at EFI and we have added one at the Wentworth Monarch plant in Oakville, Ontario. The Niigon machines can run all legacy tooling from any preform mould maker and we get fast cycles with very low energy consumption compared to competitive machines. We were also impressed with Niigon’s excellent service. They have good people with PET experience. They also have the only 5 year machine warranty in our industry and they give us the data of their machine components so that we can buy parts directly from their suppliers without a markup”.
EFI has room on their existing property to add an expansion that would contain six more preform systems. “ As our customers grow their businesses, some will want to take their preform moulding in house” says Buchanan. “We can now offer to sell them, with Niigon, a complete PET preform system that will meet all their needs. We are very excited about this new opportunity to better serve our customers”.
Photo: Rob Sicilia, VP PET Preforms, Niigon Machines and Brian Karns, General Manager, EFI in front of EFI’s Niigon preform machines
