“A new idea every day”
50th anniversary of the company M.Tanner AG
25 km north-east of Zurich, Switzerland, lies the city of Winterthur, where the headquarters of M.Tanner AG is located. The family business, now in its second generation, invited its employees, friends, suppliers and customers to the three-day anniversary celebration. The company produces preform handling systems and currently has around 4,000 systems in operation worldwide. In addition to feeding preforms into the blow moulding machine, other products and functions have been added over time.
In bright sunshine and in Swiss cosiness, employees led visitors through a parkour to report on the company’s history and at the same time to draw attention to the technological milestones. The parkour ended in the present time and, appropriately, in the heart of the factory hall.
Surrounded by silos and conveyor belts, Marco Tanner, CEO, welcomed the guests and invited his father, the founder Marcel Tanner, onto a stage provided. “It seems like yesterday that my wife Rita and I founded the company in 1973,” Marcel Tanner began his talk. And even though this sentence has been said many times before, everyone in the room immediately believed this charismatic, elderly gentleman. He told personal anecdotes with wit about the challenges of the first years, when his wife Rita, also a machine designer, and he kept their heads above water with contract work for the food industry and in transformer technology.
Marco Tanner, CEO, said that his father was very well known in the industry early on and was often asked for help. When there was a seemingly unsolvable problem, there was this saying: ‘Ask Mr Tanner, he will be able to help you!’ For him, his father is a role model with his modesty, in the way he combined family and work. The phrase: ‘A new idea every day,’ also comes from the father. “It is not always easy to deal with a new idea every day, but this spirit still drives me today,” stated Marco Tanner.
When the development of blow moulding machines by Corpoplast began in the mid-1980s, Tanner’s share of the PET business grew rapidly. There was the challenge of accompanying the pace of development. Due to the complexity and performance requirements of the blow moulding machines and preform design, the feeding of the preforms became more and more important. “We have also pointed out to the machine builders to take a closer look. How do you want to load the preforms, how do you want to discharge them, it’s not just tipping. Because there is one true hit. The efficiency of an entire line starts with us!”
Marco Tanner took over the management of the company in 2012. “The special situation we find ourselves in is that in the meantime our customers are also our competitors, such as KHS, Krones or Sidel. Therefore, I decided to focus also on end-customers to expand our portfolio in order to be able to react flexibly to the market.” From loading, sorting and feeding the preforms to elaborate quality optimisation, M.Tanner today covers the entire preform handling process upstream of the blow-moulding machine or inspection system.
Only three years after takeover in January 2015, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) surprised the financial world by lifting the minimum euro exchange rate of 1.20 francs. The value of the Swiss franc rose immediately. The company had to accept losses of 20%. Marco Tanner decided to focus on engineering, service and preform handling. Manufacturing and assembly were limited to the essentials, only where Tanner’s expertise was needed. He therefore had to restructure. “Even though it was a very unpleasant time, the focus also gave us the opportunity to launch new products, to obtain deeper knowledge of different markets,” explained Marco Tanner. “Even today, it’s not an easy time, it’s about overcoming crises together with our clients. We want to lead our clients not to see us as competition, but to show them synergies, to expand their portfolio, show them that our systems are complementary. We are succeeding well in this. We have very communicative and good partnerships with our OEM customers.”
Marco Tanner is convinced that in a market like this, which is dominated by a few big players like PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Nestlé etc. one needs strong partnerships. “Technically, I could benefit enormously from my father, but I bring commercial and conceptual thinking with me. Strategic developments, which company in the world could work with us, such considerations are more and more important.”
A world first in preform handling
Marco Tanner sees future development opportunities particularly in the segments of high-speed water, as well as in aseptic applications and high-quality special applications. Just one day before the event, the FAT (factory acceptance test) for a new floor-level preform line for a 1.5 l PET preform was done with Coca-Cola Euro Pacific Partners in Germany. The output of this line is 30,000 pph. The preforms are fed completely close to the bottom in double soft handling. The maximum load capacity is 1,000 kg and it has a short in-feed of two meters. A beautiful birthday present!
At the end of the event, a special highlight was the presentation of a prototype of the preform line CS45. The preform weight is 7.2 g, for a 200 ml bottle size. The output is 70,000 pph. The orientation is done by a chain conveyor. However, this prototype is particularly impressive due to its compact layout and its very small footprint as well as the high speed with extremely short in-feed. “This line will be suitable for high throughput in a small format – e.g. for the high-speed water market”, Marco Tanner concludes.
The day ended with interesting and cheerful conversations over an excellent meal in a restaurant situated above the vineyards of Winterthur. Here’s to another 50 years of M. Tanner AG!
