Positive business trend at Multivac

As part of a press break­fast at Fach­Pack, Hans-Joachim Boek­ste­gers, Direc­tor and CEO of Mul­ti­vac, gave an overview of the cur­rent devel­op­ment of the busi­ness as well as the pack­ag­ing trends at Mul­ti­vac and the com­pa­ny’s prod­uct high­lights on the exhi­bi­tion stand.
“Con­trary to the gen­er­al mar­ket trend, our busi­ness con­tin­ues to devel­op well,” explained Hans-Joachim Boek­ste­gers. “Our pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty is ful­ly utilised and we are see­ing very pos­i­tive devel­op­ment in all the com­pa­ny’s busi­ness units. Fol­low­ing 2017, in which our turnover reached vir­tu­al­ly the 1 bil­lion euro mark, we are now expect­ing in the cur­rent busi­ness year an increase in turnover of up to ten per­cent. There are how­ev­er many eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal risk fac­tors and chal­lenges, which will have an impact on our busi­ness in the com­ing year — these include the iso­la­tion­ist pol­i­cy of the US Gov­ern­ment, the con­se­quences of Brex­it, increas­ing nation­al­ism in coun­tries such as Italy and Poland, pro­tec­tion­ist tar­iffs and high­ly fluc­tu­at­ing raw mate­r­i­al prices.”

Opening of the new production site in Bulgaria

In June the offi­cial open­ing of the first pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty in East­ern Europe was cel­e­brat­ed in Bul­gar­ia — and this fur­ther expand­ed the com­pa­ny’s glob­al pro­duc­tion net­work. The Bul­gar­i­an site, which is locat­ed close to the cap­i­tal Sofia, com­pris­es a fac­to­ry build­ing for the pro­duc­tion of parts for the Group, a state-of-the-art ware­house and logis­tics cen­tre, a train­ing facil­i­ty and an admin­is­tra­tion build­ing. In addi­tion to the Bul­gar­i­an Sales and Ser­vice com­pa­ny, an inter­na­tion­al Shared Ser­vice Cen­tre for IT, Strate­gic Pur­chas­ing, Design and Ser­vice is also housed in the new com­plex. “Work­ing on a tre­ble-shift basis, our high­ly qual­i­fied per­son­nel are now pro­duc­ing machine parts and mod­ules. There we are using state-of-the-art turn­ing and milling machines, just as we also use at our head­quar­ters in Ger­many. All our capac­i­ty is now ful­ly utilised,” explained Hans-Joachim Boekstegers.

EU Plastics Strategy

Thanks to Mul­ti­vac’s exist­ing pack­ag­ing tech­nol­o­gy, it is already pos­si­ble today to have pack con­cepts, which pro­vide reduced con­sump­tion of resources as well as dra­mat­i­cal­ly increased recy­cla­bil­i­ty. “Our machines are designed in such a way, that they can run a wide range of pack­ag­ing mate­ri­als with ease. We are also con­sis­tent­ly striv­ing to reduce the pack­ag­ing mate­r­i­al used in the pro­duc­tion of packs, by util­is­ing spe­cif­ic equip­ment options and opti­mised pack design. And last but not least, we are work­ing with lead­ing pack­ag­ing mate­r­i­al man­u­fac­tur­ers to devel­op new pack­ag­ing con­cepts, such as for exam­ple the use of recy­clable mate­ri­als like mono films or fibre-based pack­ag­ing mate­ri­als,” said Hans-Joachim Boekstegers.

MultiFresh PaperBoard vacuum skin packs

Paper­Board offers a wide range of solu­tions for pro­duc­ing packs based on paper fibre, which can ful­ly meet the require­ments of recy­cla­bil­i­ty. Thje com­pa­ny works with lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers on suit­able mate­ri­als, which can be run on stan­dard pack­ag­ing machines. The ther­mo­form­ing pack­ag­ing machines and tray­seal­ers can be indi­vid­u­al­ly cus­tomised to the par­tic­u­lar out­put require­ments of cus­tomers. The car­ri­er mate­r­i­al can be run in the form of either rolls or pre-cuts, and pre-made trays can also of course be used. All the mate­ri­als can be sep­a­rat­ed into their respec­tive parts by the end user, and the paper car­ri­er and plas­tic film can then be put sep­a­rate­ly for recycling.

Full-wrap labelling offers a wide range of design options

The trade fair high­lights also include a labelling solu­tion for the D labelling of packs, which is mar­ket­ed under the name “Full-wrap labelling”. As with a ban­de­role or sleeve, the label is com­plete­ly wrapped around the pack, and this offers many pos­si­bil­i­ties for dif­fer­ent types of pack design, as well as increas­ing the attrac­tive­ness of the packs at the point of sale. In con­junc­tion with UPM Raflat­ac, the com­pa­ny has defined a stan­dard range of label mate­ri­als, which can be run on the L 310 con­vey­or belt labeller as print­ed full-wrap labels.

Added value through digitalisation

Mul­ti­vac is demon­strat­ing its exper­tise in dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and Indus­try 4.0 at the trade fair with the new X‑line gen­er­a­tion of ther­mo­form­ing pack­ag­ing machines. Thanks to its com­pre­hen­sive sen­sor sys­tem, the X‑line is equipped for dig­i­talised pro­duc­tion and future tech­nol­o­gy, and it sets a new bench­mark in the market.

Packaging concept for medical and pharmaceutical products

With Snap­sil the com­pa­ny is show­ing an inno­v­a­tive pack­ag­ing con­cept for med­ical and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts, which is ide­al­ly suit­ed to pack­ing prod­ucts such as syringes, tablets, plas­ters, injec­tors, catheters etc. With their inte­grat­ed “snap-open­ing” func­tion, Snap­sil packs offer an inno­v­a­tive open­ing aid, which enables the packs to be used more eas­i­ly, even by elder­ly or dis­abled per­sons. When it comes to the hec­tic activ­i­ty of every­day life in hos­pi­tals and care homes, it is sim­ple and quick to open the packs and remove the prod­uct eas­i­ly in a con­trolled way. Snap­sil packs can be pro­duced on Mul­ti­vac ther­mo­form­ing pack­ag­ing machines and traysealers.