PETpla.net Insider 11 / 2014

PET news 6 PET planet insider Vol. 15 No. 11/14 www.petpla.net Husky further expands hot runners and controllers business Husky Injection Molding Systems continues to make investments to support the growth of its hot runners and controllers customers. Husky established its hot runners and controllers business as a strategic priority early in 2013 and is focused on developing products that solve key injection moulding challenges in areas such as gate quality, balance, ease of use and maintainability. Specific investments in 2014 include expanding Husky’s facility in Pudong, China with new manufacturing equipment and commencing hot runner manufacturing at its Chennai, India facility. This will allow Husky to achieve short lead times and to streamline the workload at its other manufacturing facilities in Milton, Vermont and Dudelange, Luxembourg. In the next twelve months, investments in the business will include increasing capacity to manufacture hot half plates, and introducing new manufacturing technology for manifolds at its Luxembourg facility. The company has also added more people to its sales support and customer service teams to give customers better support on mould and part design consulting, resin trials, start-up assistance and field troubleshooting. Husky has launched a number of products recently, including the hot runner and manifold systems Pronto and Ultra Sidegate, and the controllers series Altanium Matrix2 and Altanium Delta3, and the Unify pre-assembled manifold system. www.husky.ca Athena’s systems centre is taking shape The foundations and the building’s steel structure are finished, roof trusses, decking, and skylight frames are being erected. Athena’s new systems centre is taking shape as the company prepares to increase system integration and testing capacity. The new systems centre will also be the birthplace for Athena’s hybrid platform with integrated rotary table. A prototype will be shown at the NPE 2015. At this model the rotary table is integrated into the moving platen and suitable for conventional and rotary moulds. Earlier this year, Athena installed its first P120/E120 two-stage unit on an Xform 300 preform machine. The plasticizing screw diameter may optionally be increased to 130mm (E130). This machine features a throughput of 1,100kg/h PET (E130) and 900kg/h PET (E120). With this machine concept, Athena aims to become a leader in customization. The company is streamlining its current facility to reach a capacity of 4 to 6 machines per month in 2015. The new Systems Center will come on stream in early 2016 and significantly expand capacity. www.athenaautomation.com China Brew & China Beverage to move to Shanghai The next China Brew & China Beverage (CBB) will not be held in Beijing, but in Shanghai. In future the exhibition venue will be the Shanghai New International Exhibition Centre (SNIEC). The dates have already been agreed upon: October 11 to 14, 2016. The exhibi- tion centre in Shanghai offers a better infrastructure. Another reason is that most of the beverage companies are based in this area. The change to the exhibition venue was agreed in cooperation with the VDMA, and the partners of drinktec. Dr. Reinhard Pfeiffer, Deputy CEO of Messe München International, and Richard Cle- mens, Managing Director of the Food Processing and Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Association affili- ated in the VDMA (Germany´s engineering federation), spoke of a step in the right direction: “With this move to Shanghai, we want to make an already highly success- ful project even more successful. By being closer to the geographical heart of the beverages industry, we expect further synergy effects to be generated for the event,” said Pfeiffer. “The response we have had so far from our exhibitors and from the industry has been positive across the board,” emphasized Richard Clemens. CBB 2014 has got off to a successful start. A total of 708 exhibitors from 25 countries are putting on a presentation of their prod- cuts and solutions at the New China International Exhibi- tion Center (NCIC) in Beijing. 248 of these exhibitors are from outside China. The space taken up by non-Chinese exhibitors is 9,000m 2 net, or 13% higher than at the last event. As such the international exhibitors account for around one quarter of the total exhibition space at this year´s CBB. More than 50,000 visitors are expected to come along to CBB 2014. www.chinabrew-beverage.com/english New leadership at Mold & Hotrunner Technology Scheduled change of leadership at MHT Mold & Hotrun- ner Technology AG: with effect from January 1, 2015, the supervisory board has appointed Christian Wagner to take over from Werner Plass the position of Technical and Sales Director. At the end of this year, Werner Plass, 63, will retire, but will continue to maintain close links with the company. In order to ensure a seamless transition within the manage- ment team, Christian Wagner, 42, will gradually take over all responsibilities over the next few months. With a postgradu- ate engineering degree (Dipl.-Ing.) in machine tooling, Chris- tian Wagner has worked for MHT since its inception and has many years of experience in PET preform toolmaking and application technology. Until recently, he was running MHT’s US subsidiary as CEO. In 1998 along with ten partners, Werner Plass founded MHT, a specialist supplier of PET pre- form tools, and has since then been instrumental in shaping its development. Today, the medium-sized company has five production and service sites in Germany, North and South America and Asia and supplies customers in more than 100 different countries. Werner Plass is a well-known technical expert in the field of PET. It was under his direction that the first 144-cavity (year 2001) and 192-cavity (year 2004) tools were developed. www.mht-ag.de