TRADE SHOW REVIEW PETplanet Insider Vol. 24 No. 11/23 www.petpla.net 32 30 years of Intravis by Alexander Büchler Attending Dr Gerd Fuhrmann’s celebrations of Intravis anniversaries is always worth the effort. We are always taken around every part of his factory while he tells us about latest developments in the sector. While talking, he imparts some general background knowledge. This time, nearly 100 guests made the trip to Rotter Bruch in Aachen, Germany. What do asparagus, sewing needles, CD cases, bottles, preforms and caps all have in common? Dr Gerd Fuhrmann and his company, Intravis, have been developing inspection systems for all these sectors since 1993. His breakthrough in the packaging industry came with an order for 50 AVI-1 systems for the inspection of extrusionblown bottles. Günther Lehner, then CEO of Alpla, personally placed the order with him in 1998. While the AVI-1 managed three bottles per second, the AVI-2 was able to increase this to seven per second just three years later. This was followed in 2005 by the introduction of the SpotWatcher. Over the years, there has been considerable progression in inspection speed that has increased to up to ten bottles per second. Where there’s a bottle, there’s a cap. And so, in 2001, Intravis developed the CapWatcher for the inspection of plastic closures. The inspection criteria at that time already covered the main features of a cap’s quality: an internal and external inspection for contaminations and short shots was just as much a part of it as the inspection of geometric properties, the inspection of tamper-evident bands, colour deviations and even the search and detection of micro-holes. In the meantime, this has become part of an entire portfolio for the most diverse areas of application. What else needed to be checked on a bottle with a cap more than 20 years ago? The label, of course. This led to the introduction of the Ilcon2000, which later was redesigned and then became the LabelWatcher. Today, this has become part of the decoration branch and is accompanied by systems like the IMLWatcher and SleeveWatcher. As well as the blow-moulded bottle, there has been a developing market for stretch-blown PET containers. Exactly 20 years ago, Intravis developed a preform inspector. The name PreformWatcher was perhaps too long for the people in Aachen, so they shortened it from “Preform” to “Pre” and introduced the PreWatcher range. Today with more than 220 employees at the Aachen site, Intravis produces more than 300 systems per year in four buildings covering an area of more than 6,300m2. In addition, a daughter company was established in Atlanta, USA, in 2004 which today employs 20 people. “It wasn’t always like this”, says Gerd Fuhrmann. “In the early days, I would talk to interested parties in the morning, solder circuit boards in the afternoon and order parts in the evening”. The company grew and by 2001 there were already 15 people working in the company. The nucleus in Herzogenrath became too small which meant that a move to Rotter Bruch in Aachen was on the agenda. “We initially rented one floor here. In the early years, production took place where our technical centre is today and our kitchen on the fifth floor used to be the break room where staff ate their lunch which the wife of an employee prepared in advance. It was then that this feeling of a family was ingrained in Intravis’s DNA which still distinguishes us today”, he said. Finally, regarding the familiar slogan “We solve problems. Before they occur”: This has been the official vision for Intravis since 2016, although the company had been working towards this since 1996 when Intravis wrote an article for the German industry magazine “Plastverarbeiter”, describing the vision in terms of a closed control loop. www.intravis.com
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