Overview of the past year

The order intake is cur­rent­ly above that of 2017, and Hans-Joachim Boek­ste­gers, Direc­tor and CEO from Mul­ti­vac, expects a growth rate in 2018 “of more than ten per­cent despite a num­ber of risks and chal­lenges.” As regards the US mar­ket, Hans-Joachim Boek­ste­gers does not how­ev­er ven­ture to make any reli­able prog­no­sis, giv­en the “Amer­i­ca First” pol­i­cy of the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion with its recent­ly imposed import duties. It also remains to be seen, how the reac­tions from Chi­na and the EU impact on the glob­al econ­o­my and world trade. “There is also some ten­sion here in Europe, since Brex­it and polit­i­cal uncer­tain­ty in Poland, Italy and Turkey, as well as volatile crude oil and raw mate­r­i­al prices, con­tin­ue to influ­ence the invest­ment cli­mate in Europe.”

Expansion of sales and production facilities

Over­all how­ev­er, Hans-Joachim Boek­ste­gers sees the com­pa­ny as being well equipped for the chal­lenges of the future. There is also pos­i­tive news to report from the sales organ­i­sa­tion and pro­duc­tion sites. Last year the com­pa­ny found­ed its own Sales & Ser­vice bases in Tai­wan, Mon­go­lia and Mace­do­nia. A fur­ther pro­duc­tion hall is cur­rent­ly tak­ing shape at the Wolfertschwen­den site, as well as the new Slicer Appli­ca­tion Cen­ter. A new fac­to­ry went into oper­a­tion in the USA, as well as the new pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty in Bulgaria.

Integrated solutions from one source

The future strat­e­gy of “Bet­ter Pack­ag­ing and Pro­cess­ing” forms the frame­work of this for Mul­ti­vac, and it cre­ates sig­nif­i­cant added val­ue for cus­tomers. By expand­ing its prod­uct port­fo­lio in the areas of upstream and down­stream pro­cess­ing equip­ment, and thanks to its com­pre­hen­sive exper­tise in line con­struc­tion and automa­tion, the pack­ag­ing spe­cial­ist is now in a posi­tion to be able to offer inte­grat­ed and holis­tic solu­tions from one source for por­tion­ing, slic­ing, pack­ag­ing and right up to end-of-line.

Clear statement on the EU Plastics Strategy

Hans-Joachim Boek­ste­gers adopt­ed a clear posi­tion on the EU’s Plas­tics Strat­e­gy. One third of the plas­tics-based pack­ag­ing waste ends up in the envi­ron­ment, large­ly in the oceans, with­out any reg­u­la­tion, and in future there is like­ly to be a rise in pack­ag­ing pro­duc­tion. “We are there­fore con­vinced, that a high degree of com­mit­ment and aware­ness of respon­si­bil­i­ty is required, not only by the plas­tics indus­try but also by all play­ers in the process chain — this means prod­uct man­u­fac­tur­ers, pro­duc­ers and pack­ers as well as machine and film man­u­fac­tur­ers, retail­ers and of course consumers.”
The com­pa­ny is work­ing in con­junc­tion with the pack­ag­ing mate­r­i­al indus­try on the devel­op­ment of alter­na­tive pack­ag­ing mate­ri­als, as well as on new pack­ag­ing con­cepts such as the use of mono mate­ri­als or so-called biopoly­mer mate­ri­als, so that the required recy­cling quo­tas can be met. Hans-Joachim Boek­ste­gers does how­ev­er point out, that from today’s per­spec­tive the bar­ri­er prop­er­ties of these mate­ri­als are not com­pa­ra­ble with those of con­ven­tion­al mate­ri­als, and this means that there could be neg­a­tive effects in cer­tain appli­ca­tions on the shelf life of the pack­aged products.