PETpla.net Insider 03 / 2013

PET news 6 PET planet insider Vol. 14 No. 03/13 www.petpla.net Mold-Masters merges with Milacron Mold-Masters, the hot-runner manufacturing company, and plastics processing solutions provider Milacron LLC have announced that they will be merging to form a single organisation. Milacron is backed by its private equity investor CCMP Capital Advisors. It will acquire 100% of the shares of Mold-Masters for $975 million. Tom Goeke, Chief Executive Officer of Milacron will lead the combined entity, while Presi- dent and CEO Bill Barker will continue to lead Mold Mas- ters. The new company will operate across five businesses: Milacron (plastics machinery), Mold-Masters (hotrunners), DME (mould base technologies), Aftermarket (parts and ser- vice) and Cimcool Fluid Technology (metalworking fluids and services). The announcement said that each business will continue to focus on its particular solutions, while seeking to leverage the synergies between them. The combined com- pany is claimed to have stronger financial and operational strength, reduced cyclicality, a wide international footprint with a strong market position in hot runners in Asia, lead- ing to opportunities for global expansion. The transaction is expected to complete in the first half of 2013. www.milacron.com ■ www.moldmasters.com Husky on the road Husky Injection Molding Systems’ World Tour 2013 kicked off in late January with a Beverage Packaging day in Korea that attracted more than 100 existing and prospective customers. The World Tour is a new initiative that will see a series of customer events take place throughout the year in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific. Husky says that this is the first of its kind in the injection moulding industry and is intended to provide more direct access to its technologies, more locally. Tour events will include presentations and technical demonstrations from company and industry experts, with each tour event being tailored to specific market and regional needs. The Tour will continue with a Speciality Closures Day in Europe, a Beverage Packaging Day in Latin America and additional tour events throughout the year for customers in the beverage packaging, food packaging, closures, medical and hot runner markets. To provide dedicated focus on this new approach, the company announced that it will forego its participation in tradeshows for 2013, including Drinktec and K2013, both held in Germany at the end of the year. www.husky.ca KraussMaffei goes supersize with MHT Following a successful test of a prototype 112-cavity mould made by MHT Mold & Hotrunner Technology AG, KraussMaffei has put the first 112-cavity KraussMaffei 350 CV into service. It is the largest PET preform mould available for a KraussMaffei machine and is in operation at the plant of a prominent preform producer in Thailand. The KM 350 is based on the KM 320 and has been slightly strengthened in its clamp force and features reinforced tiebars to facilitate more efficient production. The 112-cavity mould is slightly wider and shorter (8x14) than the 96-cavity mould for the KM 320, whose cavities are arranged in a 6x16 layout, and is the largest mould available for machines with clamp force of less than 200t. www.kraussmaffei.com ■ www.mht-ag.de Freedonia forecasts rising closure demand in USA US demand for caps and closures is projected to increase 4.4 % annually and to reach 280 bn units in 2016, worth $10.4 bn, according to ‘Caps & Closures’, a new study from Ohio-based market research group Free- donia. Within this total, plastic cap and closure demand is forecast to rise by 4.7%//a to $8.4bn in 2016, represent- ing 225bn units. Freedonia says that gains will be driven by material price increases and the expanded use of plastic closures, greater use of value-added dispensing and child-resistant closures (CRCs). In addition, the long- term shift in the consumer packaging mix is away from glass and metal containers to plastic alternatives, which tend to employ plastic closures. Unit advances will be driven by the continued popularity of single-serving con- tainers, especially in the beverage market; further inroads by plastic containers into closureless containers such as metal cans; and the use of closures on other container types such as gabletop cartons, aseptic cartons, and stand-up pouches. Contra-influences include the maturity of several large beverage applications and competition from closureless packaging options, such as aluminium beverage cans. While dispensing closures are generally more expensive than standard types, they are favoured by customers for their convenience and ease of use. Decelerated value growth will be based on a moderation in resin price increases and further lightweighting of clo- sures for sustainability and cost reduction. www.freedoniagroup.co m cph in majority takeover of Ukraine firm Eurocol cph Germany, the parent company of the internation- ally active cph Group, producer of labelling adhesives, has acquired a 100% majority capital share in Eurocol, Ukraine. The company focuses on the manufacture of labelling adhe- sives for the Ukrainian market. The transaction, which is linked with a plant relocation, is scheduled for completion in the course of the next few months. The marketing function for the Eurocol labelling adhe- sives will continue to be carried out by Vulcascot, a com- pany with which cph has been working for twelve years now under a joint venture and which markets a number of articles for the beverages industry throughout the eastern European countries. Vulcascot will exercise exclusive mar- keting rights for this customer as far as the Eurocol labelling adhesives are concerned. www.cph-group.com