Plastics News Daily Report - May 10, 2018 - 6

6 ‹ PLASTICS NEWS DAILY REPORT ‹ May 10, 2018

Husky shows updated, diversified product range
At Husky Injection Molding
Systems Ltd.'s 12,000-square-foot
booth, there's a sharp focus on
the Canadian company's packaging
product business.
The company's HyPET 225 preform manufacturing system is running live at the booth, where the
machine is using a 48-cavity mold
to produce an 11.6-gram preform in
a 6.2-second cycle time.
Pierre Pruvost, business manager of PET systems, said during a
May 9 booth tour that the preform
design can yield seven different
small-format bottle designs. The
varied options enable brands to
respond to changing consumer demands, he said.
"Consumer behaviors are changing," Pruvost said, adding that
many of the changes in consumer
behavior are driven by the millennial demographic.
"This situation is actually creating a challenge for North American
converters. ... At Husky, we are
very well-known for our large system solutions, but much less on the
low volume," he added.
The HyPET 225 is the company's
response to demand from both
brand owners and converters who
specialize in low to medium volumes, he said. The output range
for the machine is between 15,00028,000 preforms per hour, depending on the application.
Husky's Dave Morton, vice president of multilayer barrier solu-

Plastics News photo by Joe Wilssens

By Audrey LaForest
Plastics News Staff

in-the-field preventive maintenance
much quicker, Quail said. A remote
interactive support product -
what Quail called "a merged reality
application" - that is available as
an app was also shown for the first
time.
"It allows you to get access to
Husky experts when you need it,"
he said.
Husky also showed its upgraded
line of Altanium Mold Controllers -
Neo5, Delta5 and Matrix5 - which
the company said now have faster
boot up and screen response times.

Packaging divisions
consolidating
On May 7, the Bolton, Ontario-based machinery maker announced several organizational
changes, including a strategic
move to consolidate its beverage
packaging and specialty packaging business segments under a
new division called rigid packaging.
The company said the change
would allow Husky to expand its
product offering and services
for consumer packaged goods
brands as well as plastics processors.
Gerardo Chiaia, Husky's former
president of beverage packaging,
is leaving the company. His replacement is Robert Domodossola, previously president of Husky's
medical and specialty packaging
systems business, who will lead
the rigid packaging segment.

Dave Morton, vice president of multilayer barrier solutions at Husky Injection Molding Systems Ltd., holds a
multilayered product produced by the company's 48-cavity injection molding system.

BOOTH W1303
HUSKY INJECTION
MOLDING SYSTEMS LTD.
tions, highlighted the company's
multilayer technology, which uses
activated light, temperature and
decorative effects for product personalization, while also providing

barrier protection for the product.
"What we're really excited to
show people is possibilities because really when we talk about
'multilayer,' it can do many things,"
Morton said of color gradation and
thermal and fluorescent additives,
among other effects that he categorized under "smart packaging."
John Quail, general manager of
customer success in the Amer-

icas, also discussed updates to
Husky's ShotScope NX plantwide
manufacturing execution system
[MES]. The system now features a
new productivity dashboard that
tracks cycle time, cavitation and
the amount of plastic resin going
into each part.
The company also launched preassembled hot runner kits at the
show, allowing customers to do

Rapid introduces ThermoPro line for thermoform scrap
Increasing production and use
of thermoformed packaging are
leading Rapid Granulator AB to enhance its approach to serving that
market.
The Bredaryd, Sweden-based
company, which has U.S. operations in suburban Pittsburgh, is
out with a new granulator specifically designed to handle skeletal
waste from thermoforming lines.
A company the size of Rapid
Granulator certainly has served
the thermoforming industry in
the past with its existing array of
equipment, but the ThermoPro Series is the first offering specifically designed for production waste
from that segment.
CEO Bengt Rimark said the ThermoPro is designed to allow thermoforming companies to process
and reintroduce skeletal waste
directly back into the new production stream without discarding material.
With skeletal waste accounting
for up to 30-40 percent of material
use, depending on what shape is
being thermoformed, Rimark said
it is critical that thermoforming
companies recapture that material
for reuse.
"The scrap material will have the
same value as the virgin raw material you are buying. You are feeding
it back again without handling,
without contamination. Just feed
good quality regrind back into the
process," Rimark said.

Plastics News photo by Jim Johnson

By Jim Johnson
Plastics News Staff

Bengt Rimark, CEO of Rapid Granulator AB, at the firm's booth at NPE2018.

BOOTH W953
RAPID GRANULATOR INC.
The ThermoPro line was a year
in development, and it is being unveiled at NPE2018. Rapid Granulator sees the packaging market as a
steady, reliable area that typically
expands regardless of the economic conditions.
"That is a very stable segment
that is growing every year. Not

huge; like 3-4 percent every year,"
he said.
The company is showing off its
ThermoPro 400-90 model at NPE,
which can handle widths of up
to 35 inches. But Rimark said his
company is working on additional
models to complete a full series of
offerings.
Development and research included talking to both thermoformers and thermoforming machinery
makers to find out what they wanted in a skeletal waste granulator.

ThermoPro granulators are designed to be operational at the end
of a thermoforming line to automatically receive skeletal waste on
a continual basis. Because they are
located near where machine operators are located, the CEO said it
was important to build a machine
that's designed to reduce noise
and vibration.
With the value of skeletal waste
being so high for thermoformers,
the payback on one of Rapid Granulator's ThermoPro machines is

relatively short, Rimark said.
"It's like a money-printing machine," he said. "When you do it
correctly and when it works, the
savings is tremendous.
"The return on investment is
normally just a couple of months
on a machine like this. If you understand that you have such a short
return on investment, you also
understand that you have a big impact on your profitability," Rimark
added. "The packaging industry is
really an important segment of the
market for Rapid Granulator."
ThermoPro was created to automatically adapt to different thicknesses of sheet.
"That can be quite complicated
sometimes because the thin films
want to sometimes to wrap around
the rolls or wrap around the rotor and the thicker films could be
hard to guide down to the cutting
chamber," Rimark explained. "So
we have designed a whole roll
feeder system, and we have built it
in a way that we have a very good
downforce."
Rapid Granulator has been
testing the ThermoPro through
customer trials for about the past
three months with a variety of materials, he said.
The company created a modular
construction approach to allow
the unit to service different thermoforming lines. Skeletal waste
can be pushed out upward, downward and sideways, the CEO indicated. The design of the recycling
machine can be adapted to serve
those different approaches.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Plastics News Daily Report - May 10, 2018