PETpla.net Insider 12 / 2018

INSPECTION 33 PET planet Insider Vol. 19 No. 12/18 www.petpla.net Solving problems before they occur Vision systems for the US market by Heike Fischer May 22, 2018 Intravis Inc, Atlanta, USA We met: Andreas Mueller, CEO, Scott Heins, Director of Sale & Marketing and Winta Patterson, Sales & Marketing Coordinator Since the founding of Intravis GmbH by Dr Gerd Fuhrmann near Aachen, Germany in 1993 the company has become one of the world market leaders for vision inspection systems for the plastic packaging industry. Intravis develops, manufactures and delivers turnkey inspection systems for manufacturers of closures, bottles, preforms, thin-wall containers and decoration. Tour Sponsors: In 2004 the first subsidiary was founded in Atlanta, GA, USA in the heart of the American beverage and plastic packaging industry. In 2012 the second subsidiary followed in Shang- hai, China. Sales and service centres are located worldwide e.g. in Mexico City, Moscow, Sydney and Bangalore. After the NPE show in Orlando, FL, PETplanet continues its Editour north and take the opportunity to stop by at Norcross close to Atlanta where Andreas Mueller, Scott Heins and Winta Patterson welcomes the Edi- tourmobil at the Intravis Inc. facility. Andreas was the first man on the ground at the Norcross facility. As a field service engineer he worked for Intravis in Germany and moved to Norcross in 2006. Here he started as Executive Vice President with his wife Vera managing accounting and administration. At this time the facility had a footprint of 800 square feet. In 2007/2008 he hired more technicians and a sales manager to build up a service department. When he became CEO in 2011, Andreas doubled the turnover of the business. To build up their team, Intravis Inc. came to rely on people with a military background, because of their technical education, field experiences and trustworthiness. Today in 2018, 20 employees work in a 10,000 square foot facility. “From Norcross we serve all of the North, Central and South Ameri- can markets,” explains Andreas. “We specialise in bottle, preform, closure, and in-mould label (IML) inspection. The American market has some dif- ferent requirements than the Euro- pean market, for example we do more thread dimension inspections, and the speed demands are commonly the highest here due to the high volume demands for plastic packaging. Europe and North America are very important markets for us, as well as China. We are seeing general growth in all mar- kets, with some variations due to the regional economies,” says Andreas. “With our latest product introduc- tion, the new PreWatcher 4, we have shown once more that Intravis is very much a specialist in complete turnkey design. With innovative engineering, we offer solutions based on cutting edge technology for the plastic pack- aging inspection industry,” empha- sises Scott Heins. Scott joined Intravis Inc. as Sales & Marketing Director two years ago. “The PreWatcher4 is designed for inspection speeds up to 100,000 preforms per hour and can handle clear, opaque or semi-trans- parent preforms. It is a linear system, offering great flexibility while avoiding the need for change parts. The han- dling system presents the preforms so there are no blind spots. A complete changeover can be done in 5 minutes. With 17 cameras the PreWatcher 4 is doing a full array of inspections,“ Scott continues. “At the NPE show we have had enquiries for eight systems, and the system presented on the booth has already been sold.” After a tour through the offices and plant, we ask Andreas what is so special about Intravis, what makes it unique, he says: “We are a true specialist for plastic packaging manu- facturers, we continue to push the leading edge of technology, and our company is service focused.” www.intravis.de From left: Andreas Mueller, Heike Fischer (PETplanet), Scott Heins and Winta Patterson The Intravis Inc. team in front of the Editourmobil