Plastics & Rubber World - July/August 2019 - 24

PLASTICS IRELAND

Major
players
Including language and game variants, Cartamundi
produces more than 40 Monopoly versions

Since 2015, sales have
been oﬀ the scale
Stephen Lennon, Cartamundi

Paul Townley, pictured, says there is
clear crossover between the Cartamundi plants in Ireland and the US

WWW.PRW.COM | JULY/AUGUST 2019

hile the Irish plastics industry
is known for the prevalence of
medical moulding, the sector
has a series of other companies serving a
range of specialist markets.
One of these companies is Cartamundi. Located in Waterford, the company is
a specialist manufacturer of board games
for the European market, including Ireland and the UK. The company delivers a
series of well-known titles, including the
many diﬀerent versions of long-time favourite, Monopoly.
Stephen Lennon, business development manager at the ﬁrm, takes up the
story: "We've been here since 1977. Waterford was selected due to the port, Belview, which oﬀered distribution channels
to Europe. We started oﬀ as Milton Bradley, then Hasbro bought MB in 1984. We
were with them until 2015, when we were
bought by Cartamundi."
Lennon goes on to explain that the
new owner, a Belgium-based playing card
manufacturing specialist, was a former
supplier to the plant. But even under new
ownership, the plant continues to produce a series of games for Hasbro, in conjunction with their sister operation in East
Longmeadow, Massachusetts.
"There's some clear crossover between
the plants," says Paul Townley, moulding
and preparation manager. "You'll see the
same operations, just on a larger scale."
He adds that the US operation covers
about 1.2m sq ft, where the Irish plant has
250,000 sq ft.
It might be assumed that, as a games
manufacturer, the main plastics angle
would be thermoforming the in-box game
trays, but Townley says there's much
more. "We have 24 injection moulding
machines, all with either three- or ﬁve-axis
automation. In some cases, the robotics
are used to assemble game components."
In practise, this could see a pair of machines producing separate parts and a
ﬁve-axis universal robot assembling those

Photo: PRW

Games manufacturer
Cartamundi talks with PRW
about how eﬃciency in
production helps to support
business operations

individual components. But there's more.
"We have four, twin-colour injection
moulding machines," says Townley. "We've
done some overmoulding, in one case to
make the wheels and tyres of an Action
Man vehicle. That was all in the same tool.
Now we're also producing a stylus pen,
Scriba, which uses the same technology."

PREFERRED SUPPLY

Paul Townley oﬀers more on the moulding machines used across production.
"We used to be a [Sumitomo] Demag
shop, but now we're primarily Engel. We
were one of the ﬁrst companies to use
their tie bar-less machines."
He continues by saying there were
concerns that the tie bar-less setup would
result in greater tool wear due to a lack of
accuracy, but those fears were unfounded. Further, the company beneﬁtted
from reduced-tonnage machines, which
oﬀered a smaller machine footprint and
reduced energy consumption.
Townley continues: "In 2007, we started
looking at electric machines. In partnership
with our sister plant in the US, that resulted in a global deal with Sumitomo Demag.
Now, we've got seven electric machines
and the US has about 20 examples.
"So we've Engel, Sumitomo and FANUC
machines. There's also one [Wittmann]
Battenfeld. At 650 tonnes it's the largest
we have, but typically our machines range
from 100-350 tonnes."
Surprisingly, the Cartamundi plant has
just a single thermoforming machine, but
this is pushed to maximum capacity. "Operating on a three-second cycle, we make
about seven million game trays each year,"
says Lennon.
"As it's the only thermoformer, there
are about 20 tooling changes each week,"
says Townley. "There's a standardised
motherframe to support the tooling, it
helps to reduce switchover times."
He goes on to explain that tooling costs
can be high, but in some cases that value

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Plastics & Rubber World - July/August 2019

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