As plastic packaging requirements continue to evolve in response to new legislation, environmental considerations and changing consumer demand and lifestyle, keeping up can pose a challenge for plastic packaging manufacturers.
Realising this, injection moulding machine manufacturer Engel inaugurated its new Packaging Centre, designed to provide support to its customers in this demanding industry with dedicated technology and expertise. Main topics that will be addressed at the new Packaging Centre are energy efficiency, the circular economy and digitalisation.
"Cycle time and energy efficiency are the most important key efficiency indicators in the packaging industry,” Christoph Lhota, Vice President of Business Unit Packaging at Engel told the some 300 international visitors who visited the company’s Packaging Day 2022 on 17 May. Among other things, the new centre will offer customers the opportunity to try for themselves what Engel’s injection moulding machines are capable of in terms of packaging. Customers can bring their own moulds, and also their own materials, to the new Packaging Centre for a hands-on performance test including cycle time and energy efficiency analyses, or use a mould provided by Engel on site.
The new centre is fully equipped with fit-for-purpose production cells for a wide variety of packaging requirements, including all-electric e cap high-performance machines for manufacturing caps and flip-top lids, e-speed machines for thin-walled containers and pails, and duo speed dual-platen machines for large containers. In addition to this, customers will also have access to Engel’s all-electric e-mac injection moulding machines at the new technology centre, as this is a series that is increasingly opted for, for packaging applications in the mid-performance segment and frequently for processing recycled material. All of the injection moulding machines are equipped with smart assistance systems from the Engel inject 4.0 programme, such as
iQ weight control, which detects fluctuations in the shot volume and material viscosity and automatically compensates for them in the same cycle; and iQ flow control, which controls the temperature differences in the individual cooling circuits to maintain the set value.
”The key to high energy efficiency is the individual plant components harmonising in the best possible way. In each case, we individually adapt the production cell to the requirements of the product to be manufactured", said Lhota.
Next to the inauguration of the Packaging Centre, the programme of the Packaging Day - which started in Schwertberg and ended at the company’s St. Valentin site - offered various keynotes, panel discussions and live machine exhibits at both locations. Among the speakers was Prof. Edward Kosior from Nextek, whose presentation on the use of recycled PP for food-contact applications opened up exciting new perspectives for the use of recycled resin in food packaging in the near future.
Engel inaugurated its new Packaging Centre with some 300 customers and partners. Production cells are available for customer tests and performance analyses at the Schwertberg and St. Valentin locations.