Plastics & Rubber World - May/June 2019 - 14

ireland

Golden opportunities in
the emerald isle
Julian Buckley travels to Ireland to find out what's behind the burgeoning medical
device market, plus new technology developments and future opportunities

a

Locations of companies included in
this feature

ccording to 2018 figures published
by Polymer Technology Ireland, a
trade body representing the national polymer industry, there are approximately 230 plastics companies in Ireland
now working in the medtech, ICT, biopharma, agri-food and automotive sectors.
About 77% of all output is exported,
representing total sales of €1.62bn, on an
annual turnover of €2.1bn. These companies have a combined workforce of about
7,700 employees, a 7.7% increase over
recent years. These workers are spread
across a series of production hubs, including Athlone, Limerick, Galway, Sligo,
Dublin, Cork and Waterford.
While Irish economic growth forecasts
were recently downgraded from 6.8% in
2018 to about 4% in early 2019, these figures are still well above those expected in
the UK. As such, the Irish market can still
be considered investable, which makes it
a tempting target for suppliers of machinery and polymer products.
In March this year, Engel UK hosted
its first Technology Days event, held at
Galway Tool & Mould. The three-day programme saw invited guests take part in
a series of presentations and machine
demonstrations; an Engel e-mac 100 injection moulding machine was on show to
demonstrate a range of proprietary control functions, including iQ weight and iQ
clamp controls.
"We have been active in Ireland for
many years and the country has always
been instrumental in our business plans,"
says Nigel Baker, MD of Engel UK. "We decided to bring a mini-exhibition here to
highlight some of our strengths and make

Nigel Baker, MD of Engel UK, opening the first Technology Day event at Galway
Tool and Mould

14

WWW.PRW.COM | may/june 2019

Automation moves moulded parts to
weigh station, on left above conveyor
it convenient for the market to visit us,
view a live demo, and listen to the latest
Industry 4.0 and validation presentations
covering iQ products."
The choice to show the Engel e-mac
100 was no happy coincidence. With the
prevalence of medical device manufacturing across the Irish plastics industry,
the machine lends itself to high-volume
production of smaller items common
across the sector. The demo model
included an automated post-process
weigh station, a critical tool for validation of parts produced for medical device customers.
The prevalence of plastic moulding in
Ireland for the medical market did not
happen overnight. Jonathan Kiernan, regional business development manager
at Trend Technologies in Mullingar, near
Athlone, offers some background.
"There were a couple of multinational
companies, including Boston Scientific
Abbott, Baxter International, with operations in Galway, Sligo and the surrounding areas," he says. "Enterprise
Ireland [the trade body promoting Irish
industry] and IDA Ireland [Industrial Development Authority] saw that and realised the growth potential, which led to
the push for related investment. That
launched university programmes offering degree courses in medtech and life
sciences, to where now the industry is
almost self-sustaining."
Although Trend Technologies has global headquarters in China and the US, the
plant in Mullingar has a long history that
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