Manufacturing Today Issue 193 October 2021

Manufacturing www.manufacturing-today.com

BEST PRACTICES FOR INDUSTRY LEADERS

Issue 193 2021

today

Electric dreams Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana is making significant investments into its facilities so that it can deliver exciting new electrified vehicles to market

Forecasting: As global manufacturing sees the signs of recovery, dynamic demand forecasting offers companies a path to develop resiliency ahead of future disruption Automation: On every production site there are repetitive tasks – not jobs – that could be easily be automated - these are where collaborative robots come into their own Aerospace sector: Why Aerospace & Defense companies need to turbo-charge their current efforts and launch climate initiatives across the supply chain

Chairman Andrew Schofield

Editor’s Letter

Managing Director Joe Woolsgrove Editor Libbie Hammond Assistant Editor Will Daynes Staff Writers Alex McDonald • Danielle Champ Jessica Olley Managing Art Editor Fleur Daniels Art Editor David Howard Advertising Designer Paul Gillings Sales Director Alasdair Gamble Operations Director Philip Monument Operations Manager Natalie Griffiths Research Managers Jo-Ann Jeffery • Ben Richell Kieran Shukri Editorial Researchers Adam Blanch • Mark Cowles Jeff Goldenberg • Mark Kafourous James Page • Wendy Russell Richard Saunders Sales Director Alasdair Gamble Advertising Sales Johanna Bailey • Mike Berger Jessica Eglington • James Fuller • Alex Hartley Theresa McDonald • Reid Lingle Ibby Mundhir • Sam Surrell Web Sales web@schofieldpublishing.com Subscriptions i.kidd@schofieldpublishing.com

Hello and welcome to the October issue of Manufacturing Today.

It’s a real pleasure to be able to introduce you to this month’s magazine, as we have such a fantastic selection of business stories to share with you, from recognizable industry leaders including automotive giant Toyota Motor Manufacturing. Having already looked at the operations of General Motors in a previous issue, and reported its plans for going electric, we’re really looking forward to highlighting more automotive names and their journeys in the future.

Of course we also have some other great stories to share, including Smurfit Kappa and its advances in technology that push for sustainable solutions, and BGEN, which has undergone a major rebrand.

We do appreciate the opportunity be able to report on developments at such respected and renowned manufacturers – if you’d like to appear in our pages and have your name featured amongst this caliber of company then please do get in touch.

Libbie Hammond EDITOR

libbie@schofieldpublishing.com

ON THE COVER

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Manufacturing Today Magazine

Schofield Publishing Ltd Corporate Head Office Cringleford Business Centre, 10 Intwood Road, Cringleford, Norwich, NR4 6AU, U.K. Tel: (312) 854-0123 Tel: 044 (0)1603 274130

Our cover story this issue is Toyota Motor

Manufacturing Indiana, which is seeing very significant investment as it plans to produce new vehicles from the site, including the first Lexus vehicle to be produced at Toyota Indiana. These vehicles will form part of Toyota’s electrified portfolio, which it is determined to continue to expand. As Tim Hollander, Toyota Indiana’s Vice President of Manufacturing, noted, Toyota already produces more hybrid vehicles globally than any other carmaker and plans to increase the total number by 2025. For the full story visit page 16.

Issue 193 2021

today

Electric dreams Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana is making significant investments into its facilities so that it can deliver exciting new electrified vehicles to market

Forecasting: As global manufacturing sees the signs of recovery, dynamic demand forecasting offers companies a path to develop resiliency ahead of future disruption Automation: On every production site there are repetitive tasks – not jobs – that could be easily be automated - these are where collaborative robots come into their own Aerospace sector: Why Aerospace & Defense companies need to turbo-charge their current efforts and launch climate initiatives across the supply chain

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Please note: The opinions expressed by contributors and adver tisers within this publication do not necessarily coincide with those of the editor and publisher. Every reasonable effor t is made to ensure that the information published is accurate, and correct at time of writing, but no legal responsibility for loss occasioned by the use of such information can be accepted by the publisher. All rights reserved. The contents of the magazine are strictly copyright, the proper ty of Schofield Publishing, and may not be copied, stored in a retrieval system, or reproduced without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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Contents INSIDE THIS

ISSUE

COVER STORY

FEATURES

16

4 Aerospace sector

Why Aerospace & Defense companies need to turbo-charge their current efforts and launch climate initiatives across the supply chain

6 Forecasting

Covid-19 and a series of subsequent disruptions have uncovered the core flaw behind Just-In-Time models - what needs to change?

Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana, Inc

38

6 EPIQ Machinery 8 Automation

According to Mark Gray, collaborative automation is simpler, cheaper and more straightforward than many people imagine

52

8 Fragrance Oils

10 Financial technology

72

As manufacturers look to recruit staff, they can consider financial technological solutions that make their workplaces more attractive

12 Manufacturing news

Updates and announcements from the manufacturing arena

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REA Holdings

COMPANY PROFILES

22

30

Platinum Stairlifts

Envair Technology

44

48

BGEN

Vari-Form Manufacturing

60

68

Schumacher Packaging GmbH

Smurfit Kappa

76

80

DeWys Metal Solutions

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Going green

The next supply chain challenge for A&D.

By Diana Dimitrova, Pelayo Losada and Marine Baudin-Sarlet

I

n the past five years, companies across industries have accelerated their journeys toward carbon neutrality. Why now? As climate change awareness grows, customers and investors are pushing companies to become greener. Significant economic opportunities are awarded to trailblazers, while industry laggards are more and more challenged.

Aerospace and Defense (A&D) is a telling example. The industry represents four to five percent of worldwide CO2 emissions today and could grow to 25 percent or more by 2050 if it doesn’t accelerate its efforts to match the decarbonization pace of trailblazer industries. Of course, climate is not a new concern in A&D, and leading companies have started to invest in cleaner technologies years ago; however, several factors are intensifying the race towards greener skies and battlefields. First, corporate customers are increasingly aware of the industry’s carbon footprint and are starting to include environmental criteria in their procurement policies. For instance, both the UK MoD and the US DoD have announced that climate performance will be considered in upcoming Defense tenders. Investors follow customers: shareholders are more and more likely to disengage from ‘climate sin stocks’ for both reputational and financial considerations.

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And regulators are adding to the pressure, aiming to provide clear economic incentives to decarbonize by imposing quotas, taxes, and control measures to limit emissions. As a result, A&D companies need to transform faster than ever to preserve their order book, stock value and cost competitiveness.

Faced with these constraints, most A&D companies have committed to reduce CO2 emissions coming from their manufacturing processes (scope 1 and scope 2) and launched initiatives to that effect. The most common measures include adjusting manufacturing processes to reduce waste, rework, and energy usage, shifting to renewable energy sources or green on-site generation, and electrifying heating. These efforts are already yielding results: ~75 percent of large European and American A&D companies have seen a decrease in their carbon intensity over the past five years, excluding impact from Covid.

But there is a catch: in A&D, as in many end-product manufacturing industries, over three quarters of emissions are in the supply chain, outside the direct control of A&D companies. Hence, decarbonizing the industry cannot be achieved by the A&D giants alone: they need to work with their suppliers, customers, and partners if they want to reach net-zero.

Aerospace sector A&D companies must then define the roadmap towards their targets. An abatement curve is a useful tool to prioritize actions: it maps climate levers based on their efficiency (how much CO2 emissions can these measures avoid) and their cost. Based on such a curve, a successful roadmap can be built with business case positive activities being launched right away (e.g. source raw materials coming from more carbon-efficient processes and/or suppliers, switch transport modes to decarbonize logistics, retrofit selected parts on the fleet in service to reduce emissions) while laying out the foundations for longer-term initiatives (e.g. design the next generation of products that emits less during the lifecycle).

Then comes the time for execution. Leading companies in more environmentally mature industries have launched successful climate transformation programs, with a strong central team to steer the efforts and accountability in the business units. Most A&D companies are still in the early phases of substantiating their roadmaps, but such programs will become the industry norm in the coming years.

It is worth noting that successful climate programs often require collaboration across the industry supply chain, in three main areas.

First, A&D companies should work with key customers, peers, and partners to agree on industry-wide standards and milestones. Second, A&D companies can create buying groups to coordinate demands to suppliers (e.g., certifications, climate targets), amplify demand-side commitments, and support the supply base through expertise or technology sharing. Third, companies can choose to collaborate on selected R&D efforts which require scale, for instance to develop alternative fuels or propulsion systems.

Reaching net-zero is a multi-decade journey for most industries.

However, starting now is essential to reach the targets set by the Paris agreement. Aerospace & Defense companies need to turbocharge their current efforts and launch climate initiatives across the supply chain. Those who successfully collaborate with their suppliers, peers, and customers to transform into greener businesses will reinforce and grow their market position, while contributing positively to the race to zero. v

Diana Dimitrova

The first step is to understand where supply chain emissions come from. To do so, companies need to create an emission baseline, balancing the trade-off between speed and accuracy. For instance, when assessing the emissions coming from the materials used to manufacture their products, A&D companies can use supplier-material hotspot matrixes which can pinpoint the focus areas. A&D companies should partner with their highest emitting suppliers to support them in their development of a detailed, SKU level, emissions reporting. For the remaining suppliers, emission estimation can be done through a volume- or spend-based methodology. Similarly, when analyzing the emissions coming from customers using the products, companies should understand their most polluting products in detail, while less carbon-intensive offerings (e.g., solutions & services) can be assessed at a higher level. By using these shortcuts, A&D companies can build a solid understanding of their baseline in three to six months.

Once the baseline is clear, A&D companies should set their ambition.

Most nations have pledged to contribute to the Paris Agreement’s ambition to cap temperature increase to 1.5-2C by 2050, and companies are expected to align to this end goal. Defining intermediary milestones, for instance 2030 and 2040 targets, will help to set the right pace.

Pelayo Losada

Marine Baudin-Sarlet

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Diana Dimitrova is managing director and partner, Pelayo Losada is managing director and partner and Marine Baudin-Sarlet is principal at Boston Consulting Group (BCG). BCG partners with leaders in business and society to tackle their most important challenges and capture their greatest opportunities. BCG was the pioneer in business strategy when it was founded in 1963. Today, it works closely with clients to embrace a transformational approach aimed at benefiting all stakeholders— empowering organizations to grow, build sustainable competitive advantage, and drive positive societal impact. BCG delivers solutions through leading-edge management consulting, technology and design, and corporate and digital ventures. www.bcg.com/en-gb/

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Using data to drive resiliency The impact of effective dynamic demand forecasting on global supply chains. By Richard Timperlake

P

rior to the pandemic, global supply chains relied on triedand-tested models of manufacturing and forecasting. The JustIn-Time (JIT) model was immensely effective at managing and reducing inventory on hand, while forecasters used time series techniques and years of sales data to produce reliable demand projections to assist with planning over the medium and long term.

But Covid-19 and a series of subsequent disruptions have uncovered the core flaw behind Just-In-Time models – they simply cannot adapt quick enough to variations in supply and demand outside of highly specific parameters. Major disruptive events continue to happen with increasing frequency and, as a result, supply chain managers must consider new techniques and focus on developing a resilient operating model if they hope to mitigate future disruption and swings in demand.

The pandemic – and associated occurrences - have caused the bullwhip effect to grow significantly in recent months. The impact from demand distortions and shifting lead times have travelled upstream through the supply chain – much like a whipcrack - to impact manufacturers directly. These challenges have continued through 2021,

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even as the successful rollout of Covid-19 vaccinations and the lifting of national restrictions has seen economic growth recover.

The UK is, for instance, currently dealing with a shortage of an (estimated) 100,000 HGV drivers that has been linked to empty supermarket shelves. Meanwhile, the well-documented computer chip shortage has impacted the production of a vast range of goods from cars to consumer electronics. There is now huge competition to not only acquire the raw materials needed to make products, but also issues around how to actually distribute stock once it is made.

Using data for insights: strategies for risk mitigation

So, what needs to change? Building resilience into supply chains is essential but will also be a challenge after years of optimization that has peeled back disruption-absorbing buffers and flexibility to reduce costs. A better way of tracking shifts in supply and demand is also needed, as well as planning more effective responses to disruption.

While it is difficult to predict a pandemic or labor shortage, the failure to properly prepare and plan for such events is an indicator of a non-

Forecasting potential strike action - as well as internal data, companies can better understand their supply chains and what factors are influencing time to delivery. Applying analytics to this data will also enable companies to observe all aspects of their products, customers, and channels to understand how to better dynamically forecast demand through potential disruption and associated increases in demand following shortages, then adjusting their supply to meet those needs. Doing this will help to create a ‘customer-centric’ supply chain: recent research

by Accenture found that ten percent of companies can achieve 13 percent more growth over competitors by adopting customer-centric supply chain practices.

Dynamic demand forecasting enables a business to simulate different scenarios based on a range of variables, which can be compared to reduce risk and provide valuable data-driven insights, such as where the vulnerabilities, bottlenecks and risks exist in a supply chain. By using dynamic demand forecasting to prepare contingency measures for shock disruptions, businesses can start to mitigate the bullwhip effect and build more resilient supply chains.

Leveraging the power of automation to build resilience

resilient supply chain – one that is no longer fit for purpose in a world of constant disruption.

Organizations do not have the luxury of waiting for problems to occur before acting; they must plan ahead for the risk of severe disruption to operations. In doing so, the use of existing data and the discovery of additional information to build transparency across their supply chain is paramount. This will help them to develop an understanding of their exposure, vulnerabilities, and potential losses, which will inform their resilience strategies and provide them with the building blocks for crucial insights.

Quality data is integral to this process of mitigating risk. Businesses looking to grow and recover in the post-pandemic economy must consider how they can leverage data analytics to produce powerful insights in real time which will help with improving dayto-day operations, planning for known disruptions and reacting to emergencies. Data is also key to predicting how customer demand will shift during disruption.

By leveraging external data sources - such as global weather forecasts, traffic information, public or cultural holidays, and any

For this to work in practice, supply chains need to be agile. Decisions must be made quickly as soon as (if not before) disruption strikes.

Dynamic demand forecasting works by using existing data to simulate product trends and purchasing patterns to predict demand. By helping to analyzing all available data and modelling future scenarios, this insight-driven forecasting can be automated to quickly highlight information points which signal disruption, working in tandem with information on alternative suppliers, trade routes, or additional production capacity that can be taken advantage of elsewhere.

To leverage dynamic demand forecasting, businesses must embrace analytics, intake data from external as well as internal sources, and develop transparency across their supply chain. Combined, they will be able to more accurately model demand over the short and immediate term when demand may spike or drop due to disruption.

Businesses also need data-driven analysis to produce insights and identify which goods, routes or suppliers experience the greatest volatility. By anticipating where the cracks in their supply chain might appear, businesses will be able to prepare for when the next major market disruption strikes. Businesses that have modelled for every possible scenario will know how best to respond, providing the agility and resiliency that today’s modern supply chain demands. As global manufacturing sees the early signs of recovery, dynamic demand forecasting offers companies a path to develop resiliency ahead of inevitable future disruption. v

Richard Timperlake Richard Timperlake is SVP, EMEA at Alteryx.

Alteryx, the Analytics Automation company, is focused on enabling every person to transform data into a breakthrough. Alteryx unifies analytics, data science and business process automation in one, end-to-end software platform to accelerate digital transformation and shape the future of analytic process automation (APA™). www.alteryx.com

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Rise of the machines

According to Mark Gray, the times they are a-changin’

U

K manufacturers are undergoing a period of disruptive change unknown in living memory. The structural changes resulting from Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic have drastically impacted the availability of labor and ripped up many of the assumptions on which global supply chains are built.

Meanwhile, the rapid evolution of technology has created new possibilities for forward thinking businesses wishing to make their operations more resilient, productive and viable.

For businesses – SMEs in particular – it can be easily to become overwhelmed by the options or to assume automation will be too costly or complex to implement within their production lines. Yet, it’s a flawed mentality that will have to change if UK manufacturers wish to take advantage of the new opportunities that are being presented.

As the ‘Automation and the future of work’ report from the House of Commons committee on Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy makes clear, if we’re to create new jobs in UK manufacturing, we need more robots, not fewer.

The good news is that the evidence from countries that have been faster to adopt automation shows robots don’t necessarily have to do anything particularly advanced to improve productivity. For example, simple screwdriving, gluing or palletizing applications can be hugely

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beneficial if they help to address labor shortages or free up workers to focus on other activities of higher value.

Filling the automation gap

Compared to other European nations the UK (and Ireland) have been relatively slow to take on robotics. This is shown in an illustrative 2020 report from the International Federation of Robotics that revealed that the UK has just 21,700 units installed, compared to 221,500 units in Germany, 74,400 in Italy and 42,000 in France.

Starting from such a low base leaves the UK and Ireland in a rather unique position amongst the G7. Given the return on investment of collaborative robots is already well proven on the continent, manufacturers don’t have to take big risks with the adoption of new technology. There is significant untapped potential in beginning with simple automated tasks that have already become commonplace elsewhere.

That alone could bring huge productivity gains and set business on a sustainable path to the wider use of collaborative automation.

For example, since Brexit was finalized, many manufacturers have struggled with a shallower pool of available labor from Eastern Europe, especially in sectors that have labor intensive manufacturing processes – such as metalworking. Travel restrictions imposed as a result of the

Automation How STANLEY Engineered Fastening solved the labor conundrum STANLEY Engineered Fastening is an industry leader in fasteners.

At its Breakstem manufacturing cell based in Warrington, it produces approximately 350 million fasteners per year. In order to meet demand, the organization needed to increase throughput and productivity.

It has deployed 15 Universal Robots cobots in the production line to automate quality inspection. The cobot selects a component for batch sampling and carries out a pre-programmed process of activities, including degreasing, drying, deburring and feature inspection through a digital micrometer.

Russell Lodge, Site Operations Manager at STANLEY Engineered Fastening said: “We wanted to reduce our product lead time by up to 70 percent across our product ranges. We implemented UR cobots in the quality inspection process, and were able to deliver greater productivity, faster lead times and better profitability. We are very happy with the results.”

The bottom line

During these difficult times, many manufacturers are understandably reluctant to make significant investments. However, collaborative automation is simpler, cheaper and more straightforward than many people imagine. Furthermore, it is the foundation for ensuring that during a period of uncertainty a business can operate with more predictability with regard to output levels and costs. Thereby positioning the business to grow from a base that is resilient, efficient and viable. v

pandemic have only exacerbated the problem and made it even less feasible to bring in manpower from abroad. The UK can look to nations such as Denmark and Japan which were forced to address labor shortages much earlier. Japan has long struggled with an ageing workforce and declining population, but by innovating and taking on robotics the country was able to offset its changing demographics and establish itself as a world leader in automotive and electronics manufacturing.

Robots as a tool

The essence of the argument for automation is captured by Henry Ford, ‘If you need a machine and don’t buy it, then you will ultimately find that you have paid for it and don’t have it.’ A company that automates manual ways of working now will find itself in a better place in a year’s time than a company that doesn’t. It may even find itself on the path to funding future investments in automation purely from the proceeds of the productivity gains it is making.

On every production site there are repetitive tasks – not jobs – that could be easily be automated. Think polishing and sanding, basic assembly or packaging and palletizing. This is where collaborative robots come into their own. Deploying them to take on the dirty, the dull and the dangerous tasks frees up the workforce to carry out more fulfilling and rewarding assignments.

Mark Gray Mark Gray is Country Manager UK & Ireland at Universal Robots. Universal Robots was founded in 2005 to make robot technology accessible to all by developing small, user-friendly, reasonably priced, flexible industrial robots that are safe to work with. Since the first collaborative robot (cobot) was launched in 2008, the company has experienced considerable growth with the user-friendly cobots now sold worldwide. The company, which is a part of Teradyne Inc., is headquartered in Odense, Denmark, and has subsidiaries and regional offices around the world. www.universal-robots.com

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Talent search

James Herbert looks at how fintech solutions can help the manufacturing industry to fill a growing skills gap

T

he manufacturing industry has been hit by lots of change in recent years, but Covid-19 caused more widespread uncertainty and stress as workers struggled through the volatility of lockdowns and ever-changing working conditions.

As a result, many workers have left for jobs in other sectors. PWC’s Annual Manufacturing Report highlights the fact that manufacturers are facing the largest shortage of skilled workers in the UK since 1989.

The issue has only been exacerbated by Brexit; exports between the UK and EU fell by over 40 per cent in January alone, according to the Office for National Statistics, and further uncertainty seems likely over the coming months.

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Despite this, many manufacturing businesses are actually busier than ever. According to a KPMG survey, there are plenty of roles available for workers who want them, with overall vacancies rising to the greatest extent in the survey’s 24-year history, and temporary vacancies are also expanding at the fastest rate since 1997. The problem is encouraging workers back to manufacturing to fill those roles.

There are plenty of reasons for businesses in this industry to be positive, however. For starters, the UK remains one of the largest manufacturing hubs in the world, solving problems that affect all of our daily lives. As a country, we have a proud history in manufacturing, driving the industrial revolution and shaping the modern world, and

Financial technology is a more productive employee, also proving more creative and suffering from less fatigue, according to a report from nexalearning.

Technology is just one of the ways that businesses can help to boost workplace wellbeing, whether it’s using the latest software to conduct surveys that monitor workplace wellbeing and gather employee feedback, or embracing communication platforms that help workers and line managers to stay connected even when working apart.

Manufacturing businesses can also apply more innovative approaches to financial wellbeing as well. Companies can adopt low-cost or even free fintech technology, for example, providing workers with more flexibility when it comes to accessing the money they’ve earned.

This can make a huge difference when it comes to attracting new workers, with 81 per cent of people taking pay frequency into account when applying for jobs in different sectors, according to a study Hastee conducted recently. Such solutions can also play a key part in retaining current staff, with the same survey finding that 52 per cent of workers are also more likely to continue working in a role that offers flexible pay.

Helping workers to avoid high-cost credit

there’s no reason that manufacturers can’t continue to innovate, nurture talent and thrive.

Careers in manufacturing can be financially rewarding, exciting and diverse. While the manufacturing industry may face ongoing challenges over the coming months and years, there are thankfully plenty of ways that businesses can make a positive difference to their workforce, not least by improving the benefits on offer for their employees.

Supporting employees and boosting workplace wellbeing

The manufacturing industry isn’t afraid of change, and PWC also reports that 94 percent of manufacturers are adjusting their business in new ways to achieve growth. They’re open to new opportunities, considering how best to use technology to increase their efficiency, effectiveness and productivity, and it’s important that they also consider the mental wellbeing of employees.

Workers have already faced considerable disruption over the past 18 months, and Covid-19 has helped to shine a light on the importance of workplace wellbeing. After all, according to research from Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, a happy employee

An ‘Earnings on Demand’ (EoD) payment model is one such flexible solution, providing employees with the opportunity to access a portion of their monthly pay in real-time. This means that even when times are tough, businesses can provide workers with a financial lifeline, helping them to access the pay they’ve earned without having to turn to high-cost credit – something 82 percent of workers relied on in 2020, according to our study.

Businesses are also in a great position to help their workforce when it comes to financial advice and budgeting, with plenty of different options available. nudge, for example, gives users access to financial education and money management tools. Along with Earnings on Demand, such tools can really help workers to take control of their finances, making the decisions that will help their money to go a whole lot further.

With the manufacturing industry becoming ever more competitive, and businesses facing a tough challenge when it comes to attracting the best talent, workplace wellbeing solutions are just one of the ways that can help to bridge the growing skills gap. Not only can such solutions help to attract and retain workers, they can also help when it comes to increasing productivity and creativity, helping manufacturing companies to meet the challenges of Brexit and a post-pandemic world head on. v

James Herbert James Herbert is founder & CSO at Hastee, an award-winning earnings on demand technology, offered as a workplace benefit that enables workers to take a portion of their earned pay, on demand, increasing choice and financial flexibility. It’s an ethical alternative to taking on debt from sources of credit and is designed to stop the cycle of accumulating interest fees facing those borrowing money month to month. www.hastee.com

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NEWS IN BRIEF Digital collaboration PTC and the Volvo Group plan to further increase collaboration around digital engineering. The global car maker has decided to unify its CAD platforms, which positions PTC’s products to serve as the primary CAD and PLM solutions used in complete vehicle design.

This world-class solution, which will leverage the full capabilities of PTC’s Windchill® product lifecycle management (PLM) software and Creo® computeraided design (CAD) software, is designed to promote collaboration across Volvo Group’s PLM and CAD functions and significantly increase the reuse of digital product data across the company.

“Using one PLM and CAD platform will act as a key enabler in our digital engineering transformation,” said Lars Stenqvist, CTO at Volvo Group.

“Leveraging this foundation, we see great possibilities in connecting PTC’s IOT and AR solutions into our digital thread strategy.”

Strategic partnership Britishvolt (BV) has entered into a strategic partnership with Circulor, the leading provider of sustainable supply chain and dynamic CO2 traceability, to set a new benchmark in CO2 footprint tracking across all of its process, including the build of its Gigaplant and wider supply chain monitoring. The process will lead to an industry wide benchmark platform that paves the way for others to track its roadmap to net zero.

BV has instructed Circulor to trace building material supply chains to fully understand inherited CO2 emissions used in BV’s Gigaplant and in the process make this information readily available.

It is believed to be the first time that both CO2 emissions from construction materials and a combined assessment of the social, economic and environmental impact on the local and regional economy for a large building have been tracked in this way.

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Pioneering plant Dow Polyurethanes and Orrion Chemicals Orgaform together with Eco-mobilier, H&S Anlagentechnik and The Vita Group have inaugurated a pioneering mattress recycling plant as part of the RENUVA™ program.

Old mattresses made of polyurethane foam will now be recovered, dismantled and chemically recycled to create a new polyol, which is a key starting material to produce polyurethane.

This RENUVATM polyol is designed for various applications including mattresses. The unveiling is a major step forward for the recovery and recycling of polyurethane foam and a significant advance for closing the loop for end-of-life mattresses. At full capacity the plant will process up to 200,000 mattresses per year to tackle the growing mattress waste problem.

“We are immensely proud to have unveiled this plant. By doing so we are answering the question of what can be done with recycled polyurethane foam. It is part of Dow’s strong commitment to delivering solutions that help close the loop and protect our environment,” commented Marie Buy, Sustainability Leader EMEAI, Dow Polyurethanes, “As RENUVA™ now shifts focus to the production phase and the first foam made with the new polyol, our Dow Polyurethane sustainability journey continues. We are actively exploring future possibilities for recycled material and potential applications. It is really a new beginning.”

Additional funding Locus Robotics, the leader in autonomous mobile robots (AMR) for fulfilment warehouses, has secured $50 million in additional funding from existing investor Tiger Global Management to facilitate continued growth and expansion into new markets around the globe, and more effectively meet the needs of its growing customer and partner ecosystem. It is the second major funding announcement this year, following the $150 million in series E funding announced in February.

“At a time of increasing volumes and ongoing labour shortages, this new round of funding underscores how critical flexible, scalable, intelligent robotics automation has become to the warehouse and the supply chain,” said Rick Faulk, CEO of Locus Robotics. “Locus is uniquely positioned to drive digital transformation in this enormous global market.”

“We are impressed by Locus Robotics’ proven technology, flexible design, and customer obsession,” added Griffin Schroeder, Partner, Tiger Global. “As their warehouse partners face rapidly growing e-commerce volumes, rising labour costs, and increasingly demanding customers, Locus will be ready to provide solutions that work.”

Manufacturing News €7.5m investment

DS Smith has invested €7.5 million in expanding the anaerobic treatment facility at its Rouen paper mill in northern France. The investment enables the site to generate green energy from 100 percent of its wastewater and improve the quality of discharged water - building the circular economy and taking another step towards the company’s carbon goals.

The process uses micro-organisms, working in the absence of oxygen, and creates biogas that’s converted into sustainable energy by the mill’s partner IDEX. This is then used to provide green electricity to homes and businesses throughout the Normandy region.

The expansion is expected to boost the total biogas production of the mill from 26,000 MWh to 39,000 MWh annually – delivering potential savings of up to 2,600 tonnes of CO2 per year – equivalent to taking over 600 small cars off the road every year.

DS Smith’s climate targets commit to at least a 40 percent reduction in CO2 emissions per tonne of production by 2030, compared to 2019 levels, and to reach Net Zero emissions by 2050, as part of its Now & Next Sustainability Strategy.

Bruno Šteh, Cluster Energy Coordinator for DS Smith, said: “We are very proud to have increased our green energy credentials with the expansion of our wastewater treatment facilities at Rouen Paper Mill. We are not only treating the wastewater onsite but extracting a naturally produced resource which is converted into green electricity. This investment was a key driver in our overall strategy to reduce the impact of our operations here in France and contribute to providing green power to the region.”

Coming home

Production of the MOKE is set to return to the UK, with production in partnership with leading automotive Tier 1 manufacturing and engineering company, Fablink Group.This significant investment signals long-term commitment to the growth of the brand, and UK cars are now available to order.

The complete move back to the UK has been made possible by UK government grant funding from the Niche Vehicle Network, alongside the recent trade deal which allows UK automotive businesses tariff-free access to EU markets, based on defined rules of origin. It also follows strong demand for what is rapidly re-emerging as the ultimate beachfront and country estate vehicle. This has led to the creation of key commercial jobs to guide the brand through its next growth phase, including expansion into international markets.

Since the brand was revived in 2017 by MOKE International, the company’s designers have created special editions celebrating the marque’s heritage. In July 2021, the brand invited its customers to ‘go commando’ with a limited edition ‘Military Spec’ collection evoking the car’s original brief to design legend, Sir Alec Issigonis, to create a vehicle robust enough to be thrown from an aeroplane for behind enemy lines operations.

Today’s MOKEs remain true to the look and feel of the original, with a particular focus on maintaining the sense of fun and freedom that has endeared the car to so many for more than five decades. Updates include a new fourcylinder fuel-injected engine, uprated suspension, braking and the option for either an automatic transmission or manual for the more engaged driver.

Quality control Ultium Cells LLC, a joint venture between LG Energy Solution and General Motors (GM), will use Honeywell’s Quality Control System (QCS) to ensure the quality and integrity of the lithium-ion batteries produced at its new manufacturing plant in Lordstown, Ohio. Due to be completed in 2022, the 2.8 million square-foot factory will produce lithium-ion battery cells for GM electric vehicles ranging from Cadillac sedans to Hummers and will be one of the largest electric vehicle battery plants in the United States.

Honeywell’s QCS will deploy compact, high-precision scanners and basis weight sensors to serve as the quality control platform for four of the Lordstown plant’s production lines. Honeywell’s system will help Ultium Cells meet key quality requirements by measuring electrode coat weight, a key parameter in the production of battery cells. In addition, Honeywell’s modular platform and proven industry expertise will help Ultium Cells ensure long-term success by adapting new measurement and control technology as battery cell production requirements evolve.

“We chose Honeywell because of the company’s deep understanding of the lithium-ion battery sector and the fact its measurement and control technology is already being used in critical areas of manufacturing,” said Germanus Woo - Planning Director, Ultium Cells.

“Given the depth of their knowledge, Honeywell is well positioned to offer us insights, helping us to increase productivity and profitability as we grow.”

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Electric dreams

Having invested considerable sums into building out its advance global architecture program, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana is now equipping its manufacturing lines for the arrival of two new electrified vehicles

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Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana, Inc

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S

ituated in Gibson County, Indiana, the city of Princeton is home to Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Indiana (TMMI). It is here that over 7000 Toyota team members assemble more than 400,000 vehicles each year, including the company’s Sequoia and Highlander/ Highlander Hybrid SUVs, and its ever-popular family minivan, the all-new, all-hybrid Sienna.

Built back in May 1996, the Toyota Indiana plant was created to begin production of a full-size pickup truck solely for the North American market. A little over two years later, in July 1998, Tim Hollander – now Toyota Indiana’s Vice President of Manufacturing – would join the business, and six months on from that, the plant celebrated the official line-off ceremony of its initial first-generation Tundra vehicle in December 1998.

“Not long after we successfully launched the Tundra – the first full-size pickup from a Japanese manufacturer to be built in North America – we made the announcement of Toyota’s intention to bring the Sequoia full-size, frame-on-body SUV to Indiana. Produced at our West Plant, we launched this initiative in December 2000,” Tim details. “It was around that time that we also unveiled plans to build what would be our second plant, which we dubbed our East Plant. It was from here that we set about producing the first iteration of Toyota’s Sienna minivan, which we began to lineoff in January 2003.”

Learn, Leverage and Lead

Fast-forward to 2008, and the global economic crisis resulted in the well-publicized drying up of the automotive market in most of the world’s leading economies. In looking to turn a negative into a positive, Toyota Indiana decided to shut down operations at its two plants for a period of three months, during which time it undertook considerable plant refurbishment activities, and employee training and development, and community volunteerism. In fact, during this time it did not lay-off a single Toyota team member.

“We also used this time to launch our L3 program – which stands for Learn, Leverage and Lead – across the entire plant, which enabled us carry out comprehensive base line training with our people, re-familiarizing them with Toyota’s foundations and principles, and preparing everyone for the time when the automotive market would inevitably bounce back,” Tim continues.

The events of 2008 would also bring about the decision by Toyota to consolidate Tundra production at its Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Texas plant in San Antonio. The organization then announced that production of its mid-size crossover SUV, the Highlander would be shifted to TMMI, to begin in 2009. “We celebrated our

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Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana, Inc first Highlander offline ceremony in October 2009, with the model emerging from our West Plant, which at the time was the only Toyota facility globally to be producing both a chassis and a frame vehicle (the Sequoia) on the same production line,” Tim explains. “The Highlander was – and continues to be – hugely popular, with demand such that production was eventually bridged over to our East Plant in 2017.

“A further major milestone then occurred in 2019, when Toyota Indiana launched the new generation Highlander and the new generation Sienna under Toyota’s New Global Architecture

(TNGA) Platform. To facilitate this, we made an investment of approximately $1.3 billion, and added 550 additional roles to the business, which resulted in an increase in our capacity of some 40,000 units.”

Ongoing capital investment is, however, only one contributing factor behind Toyota Indiana’s 25 years of success. “In short, it is our team members who drive us as a business and generate our successes,” Tim states. “For our part as a management team, we recognize the importance of getting everybody on the same page, which is why, when taking on new employees we carry out extensive on-boarding,

educating them on the Toyota way, its history, the Toyota Production System, and its core values. Meanwhile, from a manufacturing perspective, the aforementioned Toyota Production System – and its associated tools and processes – is responsible for driving efficiency throughout the plant.”

Process efficiency

Another reoccurring phrase that comes up often when speaking to Tim which speaks to the success of Toyota in general is ‘continuous improvement’. “That mind-set of looking for a better way of doing things has been imbedded

Futaba Indiana of America Since 2001, Futaba Indiana of America Corporation (FIA) have been a proud member of the Vincennes, Indiana business community, currently employing over 700 Team Members. Every day we supply thousands of body weld and other parts to Toyota, with a focus on the Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana (TMMI) plant.

FIA is excited about supporting TMMI’s new vehicles in the future.

Futaba’s management philosophy is to be a company that is trusted by its customers, in which the people who work with us have a sense of fulfillment and pride, and that is widely supported and loved by the community.

A major part of the Futaba work philosophy is to ensure safety, quality and then production. We are proud of the hard-working Team Members in all departments; each with specialized skills, and a common goal: ‘Quality Product at Lower Cost.’

For more information about FIA, please see our website at www.futabaindiana.com

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within Toyota since its inception,” he enthuses. “Here at Toyota Indiana, we are constantly examining production and manufacturing processes, looking to identify more efficient and productive ways of doing things. We also work hard to better understand our work balance and our element cycle time verses our actual cycle time, and our people quickly come to realize that such approaches to process efficiency are not only reasons why we have been so successful to date, but are key to maintaining this long into the future.”

Lexus arrival

When Tim says with a chuckle that at Toyota its people never take much of a breath, it is because it is an organization always looking to innovate and lead the way in terms of product development. Case in point would be its revealing this year – 2021 – of an additional investment of $803 million dollars (and the forthcoming creation of 1400 new jobs) to bring two exciting new Toyota products to market. “One of these will be an eight-passenger Toyota SUV, while the other will be an eight-passenger Lexus SUV, the first Lexus vehicle to be produced at Toyota Indiana, which we are thrilled with,” he says.

“Both of these vehicles will form part of Toyota’s electrified portfolio, and will further represent the organization’s commitment to having a diverse mix of power trains that support our customers’ needs and choices. This is, of course, nothing new for Toyota, which today produces more hybrid vehicles globally than any other carmaker – we currently have some 54 models in our global electrified portfolio – and this type of investment will continue in order to further transform our products and our plant to support the future electrification of the automotive industry. Toyota plans

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Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana, Inc to expand to around 70 electrified models globally by 2025. This future lineup will feature 15 dedicated BEVs, including seven carrying the bZ (Beyond Zero) brand moniker. We’re going to offer other hybrid and BEV powertrains options on other vehicles. This diverse portfolio of electrified products will help propel Toyota toward its goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.”

Driving forward

Toyota is fully committed to a zero-carbon future. When it comes to its own emissions, TMMI is investing over $4 million on various carbon reduction projects, and an additional $2.7 million to accelerate towards carbon neutrality. “On the manufacturing front, how we achieve significant reductions in energy usage is a big focus area,” Tim adds. “One specific thing we are looking at is tooling upgrades and how we can ensure that the tools that we purchase now and in the years to come are more energy efficient. For instance, we have spent the last few years moving away from the use of air-powered tools and more towards those that are electric-powered.

“Furthermore, whenever we are installing new equipment such as conveyors, lifters and other large piece of kit, we are ensuring that they have variable frequency drives installed on them. These drives mean that said equipment only consumes the amount of energy required for a certain cycle or element, thus reducing power consumption. We are also currently in the process of upgrading the entirety of our two plants with the introduction of LED lighting, which as everyone knows generates less waste and lasts longer than traditional bulbs.”

Moving ahead and towards 2022, Toyota Indiana is ploughing on with its target of bringing its two new SUVs to market, and will soon be finalizing the vehicle development process for these within its West Plant, before transitioning into the process set up phase over the next 12-to-18 months. Meanwhile, its East Plant efforts are underway to increase capacity by as many as 70,000 units, which will also see it shift to 24-hour operations.

As for where Tim and the Toyota Indiana team see the industry in three-to-five years’ time, it all comes back to that drive for advanced electrification. “As noted, this massive strategic shift will definitely create significant process changes for us, meaning that we will have to continue to retool our facilities in order to be best placed to take whatever the next steps for industries will be,” he declares.

“In the meantime, the global architecture that we have developed here – which includes the $1.3 billion investment previously

discussed – has set the Princeton, Indiana plant up to receive manufacturing orders from anywhere in the world, which is one of the contributing factors behind us being tasked with producing the new Lexus SUV,” he notes. “We are proud of the fact that we are constantly ensuring that our plants are flexible and nimble enough to take on the challenge of building the next generation of automotive

vehicles, guaranteeing the long-term future of Toyota Indiana and the people who have made it such a success to date!” v

Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana, Inc

www.toyota.com Products: Automotive manufacturing facility

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A new elevation Ready to rise to the occasion, Platinum Stairlifts is keen to maintain its dedicated service and provide pioneering means of mobility that support the independence of people across the globe

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Platinum Stairlifts

Clive Briscoe

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latinum Stairlifts is proud of its Yorkshire roots.

With three sites based in Cross Hills, a sheet metal business over in Bolton, and additional research and development facilities in the surrounding area, the business has nurtured effective strategies to encourage each of its teams to work together, despite the difficulties of collaborating across a total of six different locations.

Now, as part of a radical investment program the company is gearing up to open a state-of-the-art, purpose-built facility in Foundry Park. “The growth and demand for our product range has been so strong that our capacity is beginning to reach its limits, making it absolutely imperative to find a new site that enables us to consolidate all the manufacturing, as well as immediately doubling our capacity,” shares Clive Briscoe, the CEO of Platinum Stairlifts. “An additional benefit arising from this development will be the move to a prime location in Keighley, which is very well served by public transport and A road links. The new 58,000 sq ft facility was originally commissioned in 2020 and the build and fit-out is now well underway. This is a hugely significant move for the business,” he explains.

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Supported by an investment of approximately £6 million, the industrial site will provide Platinum Stairlifts with a modern manufacturing plant that accommodates new componentry, lasers, steel tube bending, world class powder coating spray booths and paint line capabilities. As Clive mentions, the building is currently under development, but with a handover target date set for early 2022, the Platinum team intend to have the Foundry Park facility in full swing by Spring 2022.

Partnership approach

Founded in Keighley, the 25-year-old business was originally established to supply approved used stairlifts and it was only later in 2008 that the business launched its first new product, Platinum Curve, a twin-rail design. “We manufacture over 10,000 stairlifts annually, and supply our products not only to UK and European partners but to countries as far afield as North America, Australia and South Africa, giving the business real international reach. To sustain this, rather than supplying directly to end-users we have a network of Approved Platinum partners, who are experts in their local market.

“This partnership is at the heart of everything we do, so instead of competing with our customers we focus on providing our partner network with all of the training and technical resource that they need to grow and be successful themselves. As we work together we can help our partners to satisfy more challenging end user needs, such as when staircases have been built in very confined areas, and consequently this supports increased demand for Platinum stairlifts.

“The growth of Platinum led – in 2018 – to external investment by private equity firm, NorthEdge Capital, which has been a hugely committed investor throughout the recent challenges of Covid-19. We created bold plans to transform our facilities and operational capabilities, and despite the scale of change that we wanted to deliver NorthEdge have been very supportive through this stage of our journey,” he expresses.

Heart of innovation

Combined with the approach to partnership, the quality and reliability of all Platinum stairlifts are what sets the business apart, says Clive.

Originally starting with Platinum Curve in 2008, the first stairlift in the range quickly developed a reputation for reliability enabling Platinum partners to fit and forget it, and be sure that it would be easy for mobility impaired customers to use, providing years of service. Building on this

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Platinum Stairlifts line in 2011 came the bariatric option, capable of supporting a greater weight of up to 160kgs.

“With the success of Platinum Curve, two further lines were launched in subsequent years. Launched in 2013 was Platinum Horizon, a straight stairlift that has the ability to climb inclines up to 62 degrees for those challenging staircases. This line also featured a unique power hinge, which enables the rail of the stairlift to drop into hallways in confined areas such as across ground floor doorways, before being raised out of the way to provide

easier access to the home once the user has dismounted,” he says.

The third product is the Platinum Ultimate, which, according to Clive, is the jewel in Platinum Stairlift’s crown. Launched in 2017, this single-rail stairlift boasts a pleasing aesthetic that distinguishes it from other products on the market. However, the aspect that really sets the Ultimate apart is the Ultimate’s first step start option. Effectively, he explains, this means the rail begins on the first step of the staircase, thus preventing any intrusion into the ground floor

space and enabling users to access the seat even in the smallest spaces.

“The other advantage to this product,” Clive continues, “is that it has forward-facing travel.

For some users, moving up and down staircases can be an unnerving experience if they are looking straight down a long steep inclined staircase. Our forward-facing travel option allows individuals to ascend and descend facing the staircase upwards rather than downwards, and even on inclines as steep as 75 degrees the Ultimate will travel safely and smoothly to the

AMT Schmid AMT Schmid is a growing medium-sized company, which has been developing and producing electrical drive solutions for over 40 years. Hundreds of thousands of stair lifts, electric wheelchairs and scooters are powered worldwide by AMT Schmid’s electric drive systems.

AMT Schmid is a global supplier, supporting sector leaders such as Platinum Stairlifts that are renowned for outstanding quality and reliability, and claiming these standards from their valued vendors such as AMT Schmid.

The company gladly looks at what has been achieved by Platinum and is very proud to have been a long-standing partner with the Platinum Group for many years.

Having a deep industry expertise within the mobility sector, AMT Schmid contributes with high end support in innovation and new methods through its In-House Research and Development Center, that provides all its customers unlimited product development. At its high tech manufacturing facility, AMT produces all its client electrical motor drives system in-house, including its precision drive gear offerings.

Marco Kiene, Director Sales and R&D, comments AMT Schmid’s philosophy: “We are only satisfied when our customers are truly impressed. Therefore we move more than is expected to provide a package of support that is surpassed by none!”

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destination. Innovation has been at the heart of Platinum and each of the features which we develop is in response to feedback from our partners in order to enable their customers to have the freedom to live at home for as long as possible.”

Dedicated team

To provide the highest degree of comfort and flexibility to the final products in the business’ catalogue involves the development of seats which can be tailored to the particular user needs. The Ergo seat, which was first launched in 2012 and is fitted to Curve and Horizon stairlifts, comes with a CEL Group The CEL Group is a global engineering and supply chain partner based in Telford, Shropshire. It enables OEMs such as Platinum Stairlifts to access the benefits of offshore manufacture in China without such risks normally associated.

CEL offers an assured approach to subcontract manufacture for metal and plastic components and sheet metal sub-assemblies across a wide range of industry sectors. In addition to sub-contract OEM manufacturing, it offers full logistics support and local stockholding with direct to line services.

It has skilled engineering staff on the ground in China, within a manufacturing facility located in Ningbo. It is proud to have supplied and been associated with Platinum Stairlifts for 15 years. It wishes them every continued success and growth within the stairlift industry.

To learn more about the CEL Group please visit www.cel.uk.net

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Platinum Stairlifts digital display, ergonomic joystick for easy control of movement and multiple seat pad back and arm rest positions, each aspect being adjustable to increase the support and comfort of the end user.

Following the success of the Ergo seat an updated version, the Ergo Space seat, was launched in 2014 which has a shorter curve backrest that allows for lifts to be fitted in even narrower staircases, to a minimum width of 660mm – only 26 inches wall to wall.

“In all that we do and across each of our products, you can see there is an extensive amount of development and innovation that goes into ensuring our lifts are designed for reliability, comfort, and safety. But this level of capability would not even be imaginable without our approved partners, who provide much of the crucial insight to fuel what we do. We always listen to their feedback and comments, even if they are critical, so that we can better understand their experiences of how our stairlifts perform and how we can improve them,” he expresses.

In line with Clive’s determination to

uphold lasting relationships with suppliers and approved partners, he emphasizes the business’ pride in the work ethic it maintains with those who are fundamental to the company’s operations. “We have a fully integrated process that is essential to our development. On the one side, we have long standing relationships with our suppliers, and at the other end, we have a waiting list of potential new partners. In both instances, we work with them hand-in-hand through our development and manufacturing processes.

We have agreed framework contracts with the majority of our supply base to describe exactly how each party will work, and confirm

expectations and commitments to each other.

Effective communication and collaboration is crucial to the stability of these relationships.

For example, we have worked with key partners in the development of the Ultimate Drive unit, which powers the lift up the rail, and likewise, another supplier that has developed the technology for our Curve and Horizon products. We work closely with each of these experts, explaining the capabilities we’re looking for, the functionality we want to build into the lift, and seek ideas from them to evolve the design. We also have a dedicated team of technical experts with skills in engineering, product design and technology.

Franz Morat Group Franz Morat Group is a German company with many years of experience and core competence in the design of components (gear technology) and the development of holistic systems (drive technology). The company acts as a full-range supplier, combining the advantages of both metals and plastics and offering the complete process chain with a high degree of vertical integration. One of Franz Morat Group’s core areas is the development of custom engineered drives for stairlifts, which led to the joint project with Platinum Stairlifts. The stairlift is based on a monorail system, consisting of two different drives – the main drive for up and down movements and a leveling drive.

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“In combination with our suppliers, prototype solutions are developed, which then go through a rigorous testing process,” Clive explains.

Considering the importance that the business places on relationships with suppliers and partners, it goes without saying that the operations at Platinum Stairlifts would not be possible without the team of dedicated staff that keeps the lifts ascending.

“Our vision is to give people the freedom to live independently at home, and all our colleagues understand that. So, when we talk about building the best stairlifts to provide life changing mobility around the home, we are creating an inspirational mission which all of our colleagues at Platinum buy into. It really is rewarding to help someone who has been confined to the ground floor of their home due to the difficulty of climbing their stairs safely, who through the installation of a Platinum stairlift, has their mobility transformed and they regain access to every room in the house.

Future transformations

“Our values define how we work together and underpin everything we do; a focus on quality, reliability, partnership, innovation and caring. The synergy of this ethos underpins how we work together and helps shape the united company culture we have here.

I can’t emphasize enough how fundamental

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Platinum Stairlifts Platinum colleagues are to our success, and obviously we know engaged teams that feel valued and empowered are likely to work more successfully and collaboratively. In my opinion, that sets us apart, and it is something we are continuously striving to improve,” Clive says.

When Foundry Park comes on stream and the capacity of the business is expanded, Platinum Stairlifts expects to capitalize on the opportunity by furthering the relationship with its partners. “We know the demand for our stairlifts is increasing, so the first step is to ensure we can satisfy that demand, and by working with the partner network strengthen our presence in the existing territories. There’s

no doubt that there will be opportunities to expand into new markets across Europe and potentially further afield as well, which is why I am particularly excited about the new stateof-the-art manufacturing facility. Once we have increased efficiency, we can then invest in a number of transformational innovations to change the way that we manufacture and supply products internationally for the longterm growth of the company,” Clive shares.

With every stairlift tailored to the needs of the user and their home, the business seems well equipped to take on new heights with quality, reliability, partnership and innovation at the forefront of its operations, keeping it a trusted name in the homes of many. v

EMS EMS design and manufacture bespoke drive systems from our new 40,000sq/ft UK headquarters in Dorset. As well as a range of precision DC & BLDC motors and gearboxes we provide a bespoke service for applications that demand optimisation to meet your specific drive system requirements in the tightest of space envelopes. Equipped with 5-axis milling machines with integrated automation and sliding head lathes along with internal gear cutting, precision assembly and ESD laboratory we are perfectly placed to meet the most demanding applications including healthcare, medical and automotive.

Platinum Stairlifts www.platinumstairlifts.com Services: Stair lift manufacturers

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An air of excellence

Global leaders in innovative clean air and containment technologies, Envair Technology is uniquely placed to improve the working lives of its customers, and keep processes and products safe from airborne hazards

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Envair Technology

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ormed in 2018, Envair Technology is the result of the acquisition of Envair by flexible containment specialists ONFAB, with the support of Foresight private equity. A further acquisition of fume cupboard specialists TCS was completed in August 2020. As a result of their respective reputations for high quality engineering, all three companies continue to trade under their original brand names, but are positioned as part of the wider Envair Technology group.

“Envair Technology is a market leader in flexible containment solutions for pharmaceutical process manufacturers (CMOs and CDMOs), where we have a longstanding reputation for containing complex, critical processes through bespoke retrofitting,” explains Managing Director, Gary Bagshaw.

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“Flexible solutions are, however, not always the right answer for these clients, and so adding rigid containment products to our portfolio, as well as developing a new range of aseptic isolators, has enabled us to now offer the widest range of isolators in the market.”

Quality control

Envair’s strength in hospital pharmacies has also opened up a new market to the wider group, where the business successfully supported the NHS in the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. “We also recognized that we can dominate in all clean air and containment solutions, and adding TCS’ capability in custom fume cupboards allows us to offer full turnkey solutions to the widest range of pharmaceutical laboratories - in High Potent API process manufacturing, aseptic manufacturing, aseptic pharmacies, drug discovery, drug development and academic R&D,” Gary adds.

Key clients of Envair Technology today include the likes of AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Sanofi, Novartis, Johnson & Johnson, Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, University of Oxford and GSK. Its manufacturing sites are based in Cheshire, Lancashire and Albacete, Spain, and it also provides ongoing service and maintenance through its field service division.

“We manufacture our flexible isolators at our sites at Middlewich,

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Envair Technology Cheshire and in Albacete,” Gary comments.

“Meanwhile, all of our rigid isolators and clean air solutions are manufactured at our new facility in Heywood, Lancashire, which we moved into in August 2021. All our production is kept in house so we maintain control over quality and timescales. This means we have experienced teams of designers, welders, electricians, assemblers, and more.”

Empowered staff

Gary goes on to detail more about the significant, £1 million investment that the business has made in its new Heywood facility. “We knew that we wanted to merge the operations of both Envair and TCS, but struggled to find manufacturing space large enough for us in the North West,” he notes. “We were always determined to stay in Lancashire because of the talent pool in containment solutions in the area, so, in the end, we chose to convert 63,000-square foot premises at Heywood Distribution Park which had previously been used for warehousing.

This involved building our own electricity substation amongst many other modifications.The investment sees us gain enough space for the expansion that we expect to see over the next few years.”

Among the additions to the company’s new facility, one will find new laser cutters, press brakes, material handling hoists, and a powder coating plant, along with a client facing showroom and a Factory Acceptance Test suite.

Furthermore, to improve efficiency, Envair Technology has also invested in MY-Compliance software, which automates its management of ISO standards, and legal and aspects registers. “The new Heywood factory will enable us to offer faster turnaround times, consistent quality control, enhanced procurement and inventory management, better training facilities and culturally, will help our team feel part of a larger organization,” Gary professes.

“We also expect to see improved efficiencies from cross skilling the teams who are now under one roof at Heywood – for instance, the team who usually makes isolators have just produced their first set of school fume cupboards.”

SEP We at SEP, through our own acquisitions, are proud to say we have over 20 years business partnership history with Envair.

We have enjoyed the challenges this has brought over the years, during which Envair have become market leading experts in high containment systems; we have worked alongside Envair assisting in designing and manufacturing inflatable seals, along with many of our other solutions to meet evolving requirements. We have also been privileged to support Envair with technical visits at user’s facilities internationally. We look forward to the exciting new chapter that Envair are now entering and wish them continued success.

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Envair Technology Another thing that Envair Technology can proudly state is the fact that it is constantly reviewing and evolving its product range, often due to specific client requests to meet the demands of a particular process. “The process of product development and evolution at Envair Technology is very collaborative, and our engineering team works very closely with our clients and users to make sure that we meet all of their needs, using things like 3D modelling software, full scale timber mock ups and focus groups for feedback,” Gary says. “We have invested heavily in our engineering team over the last 12 months, moving from a department of six engineers to a current team of 15, in order to keep on top of our growing order book and the changes to our manufacturing process at our new Heywood facility. In addition to our development work directly with clients, we also work closely with other manufacturers to integrate their equipment into our machines, such as fillers, robots and automated dispensing and gaseous decontamination.”

Flexibility in action

On the subject of the aforementioned company culture, Gary highlights how, without good people the company will never be able to meet its ambitious growth targets.

“With that in mind, we take a great deal of care to empower our people within the right organizational structure. We consulted our staff on the development of our company values, and across the group, the sense of

pride in producing high quality equipment that has the potential to save lives was a strong theme. Now that we are one group, we’ve further improved our communications by introducing staff SMS, staff newsletters and an employee forum. This enables two way communications between senior managers and shop floor workers, and promotes listening all round.”

As far as current product developments are concerned, the company now finds itself creating a new range of rapid gassing isolators, which dramatically reduce decontamination cycle times from eight-to-nine hours, to 30 minutes.

“The beauty of our design is that customers can continue working on a batch, whilst the second batch is being decontaminated. This constant throughput means less downtime and more efficient production,” Gary explains. “We have also partnered with several medication workflow solution providers over the course of the last 12 months, to integrate their equipment into our isolators, helping accelerate the pace of digitization of hospital pharmacies.”

Envair Technology is often appointed by customers because of the bespoke nature of its work – if a model needs to be adapted for any reason, it possesses the flexibility to build to exact specifications. Gary gives us a prime example of this in action. “A customer recently ordered a number of positive pressure isolators for their new healthcare facility where they will prepare CIVAS and other non-toxic injectables.

STERIS STERIS are proud to support Envair with our recently launched, next generation integrated Vaporized Hydrogen Peroxide (VHP) biodecontamination systems, the 100i and 1000i. These systems are designed to achieve a 6-log bioburden reduction in GMP pharmaceutical, medical device and research environments. The systems integrate with Envair’s Rapid Gassing Isolator or a facility’s building management system to run a decontamination cycle at the push of a button. This allows for easy and frequent decontamination of rooms, isolators, filling lines, RABs, pass through chambers and more.

STERIS VHP offers broad spectrum decontamination to help increase efficiency and reduce the risk of error by replacing manual cleaning and disinfection steps.

The 100i and 1000i are both members of a VHP product line that leverages the technology’s dry vapor process, which is compatible with a wide range of surface materials and does not harm sensitive electronics.

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I N T R O D U C I N G T H E N E X T G E N E R AT I O N O F

Meet the next generation of VHP systems for integrated room and enclosure decontamination, the 100i and 1000i.

Integrated VHP provides automated decontamination for your entire facility. Now with enhanced usability and flexibility to do more with less effort.

Learn how the 100i and 1000i can integrate into your facility: www.sterislifesciences.com/integrated-vhp

integrated camera to enable easier cleaning and repositioned a critical barcode scanner so that the efficiency of the process could be optimized.

“Following the collaborative design exercise with the client, the feedback we received was that the process had potentially averted many headaches further down the line, and will enable them to work more efficiently from the outset, whereas using a traditional design approach, may have entailed them making modifications once in operation, which would have been both costly from a time and money perspective.”

Successful and sustainable

As they’d already selected a software solution for their medication workflow, we offered to create a wooden prototype of the isolators which could be hooked up to the software. We spent a day with the customer working through

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typical workflows and were able to adjust the design of the isolator in real time to fit their needs. For instance, we changed the standard process box work surface and position of scales to achieve more process space, moved an

The company’s expertise and forward-thinking approach also proved invaluable during the peak months of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020/2021. “We supplied a lot of safety cabinets to hospitals that were used to test Covid-19 samples, often at extremely short notice, and were also involved in the production of a new pop up dome that was used to protect anaesthetists conducting intubations in ICUs at the beginning of the pandemic,” Gary points out. “Our client, Dr. Sahgal of Aintree University Hospital, wanted some kind of shield to use in addition to standard PPE when intubating highly infectious patients. We entered a fast-track process to develop prototypes that were taken to the hospital for simulation testing. When we reached the optimum design, it was submitted for approval for clinical use. We then needed to adapt our manufacturing processes and add capacity without affecting existing orders, so that the first 30 units rolled off the production line,

Envair Technology eight days after the initial call. We believe the pop up dome was the first device of its kind to be commercially available in the UK, and it went straight into service at Aintree Hospital, followed by orders to other hospitals in the North West, and Madrid in Spain.”

As Envair Technology’s size and reputation has increased, it has successfully managed to attract larger overseas clients and partners, opening up markets throughout Europe and the United States. “As our key competitor lags behind on speed and customer service, we have capitalized on this gap,” says Gary. “Our strategy includes appointing new distributors, hiring multi-lingual staff, securing new exclusive deals and driving strong sales pipelines in the US, Germany and Turkey. In the last year, sales outside the UK have grown to 33 percent of all revenues. Our investment in a manufacturing facility in Spain has also helped mitigate the risks posed by Brexit and supported this strategy. Meanwhile, the move to online, or hybrid conferences and events, is helping us to build awareness in markets that might have been too expensive to visit in person, and we anticipate creating several foreign language versions of our website in the next year.

“Simply put, in the medium term, we would like to continue the successful and sustainable growth of Envair Technology across all our current sectors and markets. In line with that, our new manufacturing facility will continue to support our growth and allow us to achieve our aim of being the global leader in clean air and containment.” v

Envair Technology www.envairtechnology.com Products: Clean air technology and containment solutions

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An epic combination The result of a merger between Mecfor and Advanced Dynamics, EPIQ Machinery is a new North American leader in equipment designed for the aluminum, pulp and paper, and rail industries

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EPIQ Machinery

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Peter Hanna

Éloïse Harvey

of preparation and due process, Mecfor - a leader in specialized mobile equipment for the aluminum and rail industries - and Advanced Dynamics - a premier manufacturer of heavyduty material handling equipment for the primary and secondary aluminum industries and the pulp and paper industry - announced that they had fully merged their operations.

EPIQ Machinery was born.

Shared culture

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hen Advanced Dynamics (AD) President Peter Hanna met Mecfor President Éloïse Harvey for the first time in 2008, he was immediately impressed. Though the details were far from clear back then, even at this early stage, the groundwork was already being laid for future

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collaboration. “We weren’t ready to merge in 2008,” Peter recalls, “but we sold products together and a close partnership took hold over the next five to seven years.”

Around 2016, Peter, Éloïse, and the partners reassessed the relationship between their companies, concluding that the time was finally right to join forces. After five more years

As a combination of AD and Mecfor - two highly successful companies turning over around $30 million each - EPIQ Machinery will boast a stronger market presence, broader range of capabilities and more solid platform for future growth than either firm did previously as a standalone business.

However, despite the new company’s ambitious plans for global success, it will not be abandoning its roots. “Both AD and Mecfor have long histories as part of the Quebec economy,” Peter explains. “The ‘Q’ in EPIQ is a nod to Quebec. We want everybody to know that we are very proud to be a Quebec company.”

Having previously worked together on a number of projects around the globe, Mecfor and AD had, even before the merger, gained substantial knowledge of their respective strengths and the ways in which the two firms could work together on a technical, operational level. In order to achieve EPIQ’s shared vision, both parties understood that the new organization would need strong leadership. Therefore, while Peter’s sales skills and desire to get back into business development made him a perfect fit for the General Sales Manager role, Éloïse was the board members’ unanimous choice to lead the business as EPIQ CEO. “Merging is probably one of the toughest things two businesses can do,” Éloïse says, looking back on the journey so far. “You have to be 100 percent sure that it will give you the results you expect.

“When we sat down as executives from AD and Mecfor, we discussed our future together and it became really clear that we shared the same vision. We wanted to increase our critical mass through acquisition and we also saw the importance of diversification. The two businesses were already united by strong aluminum divisions, while AD was bringing pulp and paper expertise to the table and Mecfor was bringing the vehicle and rail maintenance capacities. It gave us three key areas of operation from which we could launch EPIQ as a new and exciting proposition.

EPIQ Machinery “Most importantly,” Éloïse remarks, “both businesses have the same approach towards culture. We treat employees and clients like family, and we appreciate the importance of knowing our people, taking care of them, offering them opportunities and making them happy.”

Future potential

One of the key benefits of establishing EPIQ has been that the company’s inherent heft allows for the adoption of better practices and the addition of valuable new team members.

For example, rather than having a Production Manager responsible for safety, quality and a range of other areas - as may have been the case at AD or Mecfor - EPIQ has the means to hire a dedicated Health and Safety Manager, as well as similar area-specific managers to oversee quality, innovation, R&D and more.

Though the company is, in an official sense, still less than a year old, EPIQ is already working on a number of major deals. Towards the top of that list are active projects in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia using their acquired Brochot technology.

“Back in 2015, both AD and Mecfor acquired intellectual property from the former French company Brochot – Mecfor for aluminum and magnesium, and AD for nickel, copper and zinc – and started working with that equipment and those existing Brochot clients,” Éloïse states.

“As part of the deal, Mecfor landed a mixture of mobile equipment and also fixed machinery, but as you grow as a company, you decide to focus on some areas more than others, and we ended up putting all our resources into the future of the mobile side of things.

“When we started up EPIQ, we were able to pass the fixed equipment IP from Brochot over to AD who helped to develop it and take it forward as a key part of our operation. It’s vital equipment for anode rodding, which is, in turn, critical for the production of aluminum.

We can now deliver full rodding shops for our clients, which really adds to our portfolio.

“This is just one success story illustrating EPIQ’s potential following our merger,” Éloïse asserts. “We are taking a line of product that Mecfor had in its back pocket but did not use or exploit, and with AD’s famous Industry 4.0

approach, transforming it into millions of dollars per year in business volume.”

Optimized strategy

With EPIQ still at the very start of its journey, the road ahead looks full of possibilities. For Éloïse, one of the central objectives is to guide the organization on its way to becoming an ‘iconic’ Canadian company.

“We want people to look at our business and say, ‘Wow, we want to be part of their success.

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We want to work for this business. We want to partner with this business. We want to give them work,’” Éloïse reveals. “It’s an amazing sector to work in, and although it has not always been seen as ‘sexy’, we believe we can make it that way. We want to prove that there

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is more to manufacturing in Quebec and Canada than Bombardier.

“Ultimately, our core goal is to support our clients in getting better and making sure that they stay on top of their competitive curve. We are growing organically and AD has

brought a major facility in India to the table too, which will help give us a bit more of a head start globally. Of course, we are going to keep creating and innovating here in Quebec, but we will also utilize our Indian facility and continue optimizing our industrial strategy.”

EPIQ Machinery

Over the course of the next five years, EPIQ hopes to increase its turnover to $100 million with the help of both organic growth and targeted acquisitions. Following the recent installment of a private equity firm, Seafort Capital, as majority shareholder of the firm, EPIQ is confident that the company’s early achievements are just the beginning for a future Canadian icon.

“We are currently laying the foundations that will allow us to attract and integrate new businesses in every one of our divisions, as well as establishing shared services in areas such as finance, human resources, quality, and sub-contracting,” Éloïse reports.

“If you are going to grow together in a merger, you have to remain stable. We are giving ourselves every chance of remaining a market leader, whilst staying agile and responding quickly to our clients.”

In many ways, EPIQ is an amalgamation of two business entities perfectly suited for each other. AD’s 60-year history has lent EPIQ a stable, well-established presence and the promise of further longevity and operational excellency. As a rising star in the market, Mecfor brings a modern approach to EPIQ’s vision, as well as strategic planning and marketing capable of getting people talking. Together, the companies ensure that EPIQ is a force to be reckoned with; an organization brimming with energy, enthusiasm and passion.

“We might go by EPIQ most of the time, but our full name is EPIQ Machinery and I think that is important because if one thing is true, it’s that there is an absolute love for machinery in this business,” Peter declares.

“Both myself and Éloïse are engineers, and so are many of our employees. By bringing

together AD and Mecfor we have only increased our passion for machinery and that engineering spirit. We love a challenge here, and if something does not exist on the market, we will raise our hand, get out there and deliver it!” v

EPIQ Machinery www.epiqmachinery.com Services: Equipment designer for the global heavy equipment, vehicle and material handling systems market

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Next generation engineering

John Sugden

Spurred on by its recent rebranding, a new CEO, and ambitious expansion plans, BGEN is bringing its worldrenowned, multi-disciplined engineering solutions to a wider audience than ever 44 l www.manufacturing-today.com

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n August 2021, Boulting Ltd made one of the biggest decisions in its long and storied history. Having solved complex engineering challenges for more than 100 years under its original name, the company determined that it was time for a change. By the summer’s end, Boulting was no more, and in its place, BGEN – an organization with the same celebrated capabilities as its predecessor, but with added ambition and a new lease on life.

“Before the rebrand, we had a very good reputation in the marketplace as a technically sound and highly reliable contractor, but we were seen as being a bit old-fashioned and lacking innovation. It simply wasn’t true, but market research told us that it was definitely the way we were perceived,” explains Executive Chair John Sugden. “We felt it was important to freshen up our image and that led us to the rebranding process.

“Settling on BGEN as our new name, we wanted to use the opportunity to reconnect to the market, as well as help people understand the breadth of our service offering. We are a very diverse organisation, but previously, we weren’t very good at letting people know just how much we could do. For example,

a customer might have been aware that we were in electrical contracting, but may not have realized that we have design and mechanical capabilities, the ability to perform switchgear manufacturing, and are very strong systems integration technology.

“The image change that has occurred as a result of our rebranding is enabling us to cross-sell our services to a much broader, diverse range of sectors and clients. People are realizing that BGEN is a fresh, modern, dynamic organization.”

With a turnover of £120 million, and an ever-growing client list, BGEN has performed a number of high-profile projects over the last 18 months. The upturn has been encouraged, in part, by the firm’s ability to capitalize on demand in the life sciences sector.

“We are currently working on a major project for a vaccine manufacturing facility in central England, as well as on a sterile manufacturing facility for a prestigious pharmaceutical client,” John says. “Again, it’s the service offering that keeps us popular. I don’t know any other company that can self-perform such a huge range of services across the Mechanical Electrical and Instrumentation (MEI) contracting space.

“Second only to the life sciences market is

BGEN

our work with water companies. For instance, if a water treatment facility requires a whole new control system upgrade, as they do quite frequently, I don’t think there are many companies outside of BGEN that can both design the control system themselves in terms of the computer software programming, manufacture all the switchgear, and perform installation. We are quite unique in that sense and that’s why we are in the process of morphing with our diverse offering across a number of different sectors.”

Expanding footprint

As a by-product of the upheaval caused by Covid-19, BGEN has recently adopted new remote working methodologies, including innovative methods of remote observation that use video links to guide onsite personnel. With the help of technologies like this, the company has been able to make savings and improve efficiency, whilst maintaining its long-standing relationships with distinguished clients during a challenging period worldwide.

“We have always been a repeat business organization,” John states. “We build up longterm connections with clients and I think that

has helped us over the past year or so because, even though we were unable to meet face-toface, we already had good relationships with a lot of our customers, which made remote working a lot easier.

“Just as important as our relationship with clients is our relationship with staff,” John adds.

“During the pandemic, we did our best to engage with and involve our employees in what was going on and help them feel connected to the organization. In particular, as mental health came under the microscope across the country, we focused on employee wellbeing and the need to support people from a psychological perspective. As part of this, we installed a variety of interventions to make sure we were monitoring and managing mental health, as well as putting on webinars and brining in experts to teach coping techniques. It went well and we will look to continue with these avenues of support in the future.”

Arguably the most important personnel decision BGEN has made in recent times arrived hot on the heels of its rebranding, when the firm appointed new CEO Robin Whitehead. This was followed by a number of senior management changes, which have strengthened the business

from the top, while ensuring that its core culture remains intact.

“Boulting was a family-run company, and both the family and shareholders were involved in the day-to-day management of activities,” John reports. “The people who brought us all that success years ago are now coming to the end of their working lives, so the company has to learn to operate in new and different ways. For us, this will mean operating more like a modern PLC where you have shareholders and executives and the two are not the same, which is different to our past structure. Of course, it’s hard to be working here without the people who made BGEN what it is today, but it’s an exciting time to be a part of this company.”

Part of the excitement currently felt around BGEN is a result of the company’s rapidly expanding footprint. Following projects in Tanzania, Cameroon and Ethiopia, the firm recently opened a Nigerian office after a significant rise in demand on the African continent.

“Our Nigerian company is now in existence and will soon begin trading,” John reveals. “Our work in the country tends to involve supervision and making use of our technical expertise, and that’s why we have a designated in-country

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workforce to carry out these tasks on our behalf.

A lot of Nigerian businesses have developed a deep client base and want to use more domestic labor because it is cheaper as you are not paying travel and accommodation fees.

“In short, we are trying to move our model

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out to Africa where we can use local agencies to deliver. It means African clients can still make use of our UK-based technical expertise, but with the opportunity for more flexible, low-cost solutions. We expect to do more global projects soon, and in fact, we have taken on contracts

for the food industry in Rotterdam, as well as another project in Norway.”

Aside from its expansion and ongoing business activities, BGEN has taken great strides in advancing its focus on environmental commitments in 2021.

Alongside efforts to support the industry as it moves to more eco-friendly power generation, BGEN is providing engineering expertise to clients who want to install infrastructure for electric vehicles, as well as converting its own headquarters into a carbon neutral site.

“We have really upped our game to help establish ourselves as a more environmentally friendly organization,” John remarks. “We plan to go carbon zero by 2030 and we have a roadmap that will help us get there.

“At present, we are investing hundreds of thousands into our head office in Warrington to make it a carbon neutral space. That effort includes adding different HAC systems, installing solar panels and wind turbines, and looking at different ways of flushing toilets.

“Many of our clients are also looking to go carbon neutral, so naturally, we want to help them do that with our skillset. For example, a

BGEN lot of customers want to install electric charging points for their employees, which can be a huge undertaking for large businesses because the whole of your electrical infrastructure needs to be upgraded. Luckily for them, we can use our expertise in design and installation to ensure they have power where, and when, they require it.”

In the next five years, with the help of John and his team, BGEN is likely to become an even better, more geographically diverse organization than it is today. Building on its solid platform in a number of sectors in the UK and abroad, the firm expects to grow its margins and further diversify its customer base so that by 2025, BGEN is a force to reckon with, worldwide.

“Adding to our large life sciences business, which I believe we will keep hold of in the decade ahead, I can see us moving into high voltage and low voltage activities and further growing our systems integration offering into sectors other than water and so making the most of our differentiator as a one-stop-shop that can offer a broader range of services to clients than our competitors,” John declares.

“I don’t think we will double in size in the next five years - I see steady, organic growth - but I would like to see better margins. Of course, the market is incredibly competitive, but by growing our margins we can reinvest in the company and that is something I would certainly like to do.

“In closing, our forward order book is looking very strong for the next 12 to 18 months, so that is quite gratifying, and in over the next three years we have strong grounds for optimism

for growth. Ultimately, we’ve come through the pandemic as a better company than we were before. Everybody has learnt new ways of working and BGEN is a better, more efficient business for it.” v

BGEN www.b-gen.co.uk Services: Multi-disciplined engineering solutions

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In fine form Manufacturing millions of parts a year, Vari-Form is the pioneering force behind structural automotive hydroforming. Hydroforming is an innovative forming process delivering mass savings, structural optimization, and value to clients worldwide

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Vari-Form Manufacturing

W

hen Vari-Form Manufacturing developed the pressure-sequence hydroforming process in the late 80’s, the company changed the face of an industry. Today, hydroforming – an efficient and repeatable forming process using pressurized water to reshape tubes or sheet metal – continues to provide a viable alternative for the light-weighting of body and chassis structures.

Vari-Form leads the market in tube hydroforming, producing structural solutions for some of the best-selling vehicles in the market for Stellantis, Ford, GM,Volkswagen, and others. Thirty-one years since its manufacturing debut, the company remains one of the most sought-after suppliers of hydroformed structures for the automotive sector.

“At Vari-Form, we have a very deep pool of hydroforming knowledge. Our teams have decades of specialized experience in the process,” reveals Director of Sales & Engineering Dean Gericke. “That experience instills confidence in our customers. They know that we can deliver on our promises.”

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Increasing customer requests for crashworthy, light-weight structures is a natural fit for Vari-Form’s portfolio of applications, including roof reinforcements, chassis cradles, front-end structures, instrument panel beams, pillars, frames, and cross-member tubes.

“Most of our applications end up being primary load structures and require higher strength material,” Dean explains. “We are at the forefront of material development for our hydroforming applications, and we work with the steel companies to address current and future needs.” Not restricted to just steel, VariForm also offers aluminium-based options for hybrid body construction.

Though still relatively small in the wider context of the automotive industry,Vari-Form has come an incredibly long way on its multi-decade journey. Primarily located in Ontario, Canada, but with a complementary facility in Mexico, the organization has consistently developed and marketed products that compete admirably with much larger supplier organizations.

Much of this has to do with the innovative culture that continues to be a hallmark of Vari-Form. “We are always searching for potential opportunities and that’s where our first-to-market claim comes in,” Dean states. “As customer engineering teams come and go, we have to front-load our approach with education, product concepts, analysis and a compelling commercial argument. We can take best practices for a system and identify where a current stamped and welded design can be reverse engineered into a more efficient hydroform assembly. For example, we are working with a major OEM on a chassis project that could yield an improvement for multiple variants on that platform.This is a prime example of why customers keep coming back to us.”

As many auto-makers transition to EV designs, there are significant new demands to

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Vari-Form Manufacturing manage performance, crash intrusion and offset the mass gains from heavy battery packs, says Dean. “Hydroforming is much more efficient than stamping and welding. Stamping material utilization can be 60-to-70 percent, while hydroforming works at more than 90 percent efficient. With material prices in flux, this is critical in controlling manufacturing costs. In general, hydroforming leads to a 5-to-15 percent weight reduction in the final product due to elimination of overlap joints used in the construction of equivalent sheet-metal parts.These cost and mass savings can then be refocused on other areas of the vehicle for secondary savings.”

Making products that contribute to improved environmental performance of a vehicle, sustainable manufacturing practices must also be kept in mind. Manufacturing Engineering Manager, Jonathan Hayes, shared this: “Our material inputs and scrap are highly recyclable. We are harvesting more data than ever before to identify trends and opportunities for improvement.” While claiming the hydroforming process is an environmentally sustainable and material efficient process, he also references a FutureSteelVehicle study, showing

how a hydroformed component in a BEV leads to best fuel economy, manufacturing costs, and a low carbon footprint. Further to Jonathan’s manufacturing team’s effort for improvement on the plant floor, “Wastewater is down, hydraulic oil use is on track for our reduction targets and we have improved our work cell throughputs to maximize their utilization.” Proud of the team’s efforts, Jonathan asserts: “We didn’t have to compromise quality for this - we have excellent scores with our customers and deliver single-digit PPM quality.”

With the auto industry facing more than 18 months of Covid-19 disruption and supply chain difficulties, Vari-Form was fortunate to weather the storm with consistent production orders on in-demand vehicles. “It’s important to have good relationships through the good times and the bad, with suppliers that are in alignment with us.

Everyone we work with has got our back and we have got theirs,” assures Dean Gericke.

“With the transition to electrification we are seeing many projects that take advantage of hydroforming’s unique applications. Our product development teams are very busy,” Dean

reports, “not only in the automotive sector, but others too.”

“We are forward-thinkers at Vari-Form,” Dean adds in summary. “We love the challenge of new applications and work hard every day to set ourselves up for long-term success.” v

Vari-Form Manufacturing www.vari-form.com Products: Structural automotive hydroforming

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The sweet smell

of success Driven by limitless creativity and a collaborative mindset, Fragrance Oils is creating some of the UK’s most evocative fragrances for air fresheners, cleaning products, candles and more 52 l www.manufacturing-today.com

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riginally known as Northern Aromatics, Fragrance Oils was founded in 1967 by Denis Carter – a man on a mission to build a fragrance business that combined exceptional value with high levels of customer service. As time went on, Fragrance Oils began to establish a strong international presence and

by the turn of the millennium, the Manchesterbased firm was supplying to more than 100 countries worldwide.

The early 2000s saw Fragrance Oils transform its production facility, investing in automation that would go on to handle around 70 percent of the company’s products. As its growth continued, Fragrance Oils began to attract attention from

Fragrance Oils We have significant ambitions to grow our business in the years ahead. In four years’ time, we would like to be 50 percent bigger than we are today. How are we going to do that? For one thing, continued geographical expansion will strengthen our position in a lot of key markets and bring what we do to more and more people around the world Andy Stedman - Head of Fragrance Oils

some of the industry’s most celebrated names, including Givaudan, which eventually acquired the firm in 2019.

Navigate the market

Backed by the might of Givaudan, today, in 2021, Fragrance Oils continues to operate as an Independent Fragrance House carrying out all

its manufacturing in Manchester, England, whilst also operating with facilities in Nigeria, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the United States.

According to Head of Fragrance Oils Andy Stedman, Givaudan’s support has helped launch Fragrance Oils into a new age of success.

“One thing Givaudan provides us with is scale,” Andy says. “As a leading flavor and

fragrance company, it gives us access to a stable supply of raw materials, unique fragrancecreating items, solutions for achieving sustainable ingredients, a palette for the future, advanced technologies, and the ability to utilize its substantial manufacturing network. For instance, over the last eight months or so, we have been using the Givaudan network in China to help us

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Fragrance Oils

support our customers in the region with more local production, which obviously cuts shipping time and helps us in terms of environmental footprint.

“We benefit from all of this, while still operating as an Independent Fragrance House,” Andy adds. “This was a key decision Givaudan made and it means we remain a business in our own right in terms of strategy and business performance. These factors help us to successfully navigate in the market against our rivals in a different way.”

Art and science

At Fragrance Oils, creativity is king. Each year, the company develops and delivers over 40,000 unique fragrances to meet the needs of its clients, which means every day the business is creating something new. At Fragrance Oils, employees operate in an environment where

their skills are valued and imaginative thinking is encouraged across all of the teams.

“The creation of fragrance is a blend of art and science,” Andy explains. “Our perfumers and evaluators use a palette of more than 900 ingredients to create a finished fragrance, which may eventually contain anything up to 70 different ingredients that help to make a smell unique. To help with inspiration, our marketeers track the marketplace for us and report back on current trends and preferences. Right now, we are still living in a Covid-19 environment where the importance of hygiene and cleaning is paramount in many products, so we endeavor to underpin these aims with ‘clean and hygienic’ smelling fragrances.

“In short, our work is about understanding our customers, their proposition, and what their brands stands for. We then look to create the correct ambiance through fragrance,

whether that be a warm smell or a fresh smell, as well as considering how long that smell is intended to last. That’s where the science side kicks in. Each of the 900-plus ingredients we use has different volatilities. Citrus ingredients, for example, will evaporate quickly, whilst heavy, woody ingredients will evaporate over several days. As a result, the perfumers and evaluators use their knowledge about materials and the consumer to create fragrances that will inspire and, hopefully, touch the hearts of customers that purchase (and repeat purchase) our products.”

Known for adopting a close partnership approach to its dealings with clients, Fragrance Oils aims to help its customers understand the way in which a scent can act as a ‘silent vendor’ for a product. Memorable and evocative by their very nature, fragrances are arguably even more important than feel or imagery when it comes

OQEMA OQEMA have been supplying flavour and fragrance ingredients to Fragrance Oils since 1999. We’re very proud to be a part of their success story and excited at the prospect of further growth, with their new fresh identity, under the Givaudan umbrella. Our strength in Asian sourcing, logistics and distribution has allowed Fragrance Oils to benefit from high quality, competitively priced raw materials, delivered from stocks in the UK and on the Continent. Either on an annual contract or just-in-time basis, we’ve proved to be a reliable partner. The OQEMA Group is one of the leading chemical distributors in Europe. A dynamic, steadily growing portfolio of specialty and industrial chemicals, servicing multiple industries, with over 15,000 products. We have offices in over 23 countries and are proud of the numerous renowned suppliers who entrust us with the distribution of their high quality materials.

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A LEADING DISTRIBUTOR OF SPECIALTY CHEMICALS Fine & Specialty Chemicals Flavour & Fragrance Ingredients Home & Personal Care Water Treatment Nitration Surfactants Animal Nutrition Solvents Inorganics Bespoke Dilution and Manufacturing

UK

A proud supplier of flavour and fragrance ingredients to Fragrance Oils for over 20 years

WWW.OQEMA.CO.UK

Fragrance Oils woody,” Andy continues. “We associate these notes with different things. Traditional citrus notes are linked closely with cleaning for example, whereas fruity notes like apples and melons underpin a sense of reassurance. I wouldn’t say there is one fragrance that particularly stands out in any one area, but importantly, we can use the scents we have to create a whole fragrance family. Sometimes it feels like we have our own language in this industry, but it’s all part of bringing a product alive for the customer in the most vivid way possible.”

Stronger approach

to persuading a consumer to buy an item over and over again.

“Scent is ultimately the most memorable part of a product and it’s a proven driver of repeat purchasing,” Andy asserts. “When it comes to specific scents, traditional smells continue to be

favored, though interestingly, scents like lavender actually vary around the world. For example, the UK’s interpretation of lavender is not the same as Latin America’s, so we are always considering that.

“Fragrances have a vast range of characters and come in various notes, such as floral or

More than half a century since it was established, Fragrance Oils’ founding culture of value and quality persists, aided now by an aptitude for selecting and harnessing some of the market’s most efficient, modern technology.Though these facets of the business will never change, Fragrance Oils continues to look for new ways to make the company as successful as possible. Most recently, this involved undergoing a rebranding process with the help of Brand Strategy and Creative Agency Touch of Mojo.

“Our rebranding has brought a huge amount of energy to the organization,” Andy declares. “It’s evident on our website, but it’s really come to life in the way we are working from day to day.

“Touch of Mojo interviewed a lot of our employees, customers and suppliers, which gave us a great deal of valuable feedback and helped us create a more modern and vibrant reality for the business. It’s been very reassuring because, at the end of the day, Fragrance Oils is a family company and we have a lot of longtenured employees who were concerned about the company losing its culture when it was acquired by Givaudan, but this rebranding has helped us build on our existing roots. It’s been a strengthening of our approach, if anything.”

As Andy previously highlighted, collaboration is a hallmark of the way Fragrance Oils does business, and consequently, it was a key area of focus during the rebranding process. Following the advice of Touch of Mojo, Fragrance Oils is

Joseph Flach and Sons Ltd Joseph Flach and Sons Ltd (JFS) has been sustained and grown by delivering what its customers need: reliable delivery of high-quality raw materials, consistently and at a decent price. The business has survived countless recessions and both World Wars, and in this latest global catastrophe it has continued to deliver and indeed grow its core business that is underpinned by the strength and reliability of its supply chain and the expertise and positive attitude of its experienced and very dedicated staff.

Due to continued growth, JFS is now about to double the size of its warehousing operation (as it just did in 2017) and this will allow the business to hold larger and more varied stocks to support its customers with better resilience, as well as allowing them to develop new product lines and markets. One thing recent events have shown us all, is that supply chains can be easily disrupted and there is no substitute for building resilience to make certain that manufacturing can continue when there is an interruption in supply chains. JFS is proud to be investing in new facilities and staff to continue its expansion and success.

If you use natural, raw botanical materials in your manufacturing processes then please get in touch with JFS, as it would love to share its expertise and other resources in a long-term partnership with you.

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Fragrance Oils now quicker to celebrate what it has always known – that the company, its customers, its suppliers and its workforce are ‘better together’.

“We’re Better Together is all about how we partner with our customers, how we understand them and their expectations, and how we turn that customer-supplier relationship into a true partnership,” Andy reveals. “We’re Better Together also concerns how we partner internally and how we collaborate across the organization. We are trying to break down any silos that may exist across the different teams and functions, ensuring we maximize the expertise of all individuals in the business.

That part is really important for me because, fundamentally, it’s what attracts people to our organization. We have a special culture that helps people stay motivated and understand that they can really make a difference.”

After adapting to the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, Fragrance Oils has continued to grow at a formidable rate. As the crisis raged across the world, the company was first to meet the ever-steepening demands of its clients, resulting in new levels of success. With the end of 2021 now a matter of weeks away, Andy and his team are preparing to capitalize on Fragrance Oils’ recent strong performance and take the company to heady, new heights.

“We have significant ambitions to grow our business in the years ahead,” Andy proclaims. “In four years’ time, we would like to be 50 percent bigger than we are today.

“How are we going to do that?” he continues.

“For one thing, continued geographical expansion will strengthen our position in a lot of key markets and bring what we do to more and

more people around the world.

“We have a clear five-year strategic plan to support our efforts and we believe it will

culminate in sizable expansion in line with our ambitions for well-rounded, company-wide growth.” v

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The total package Exciting developments are underway at the Schumacher Packaging plants; a new expansion at the facility in Greven, Germany, as well as the business’ progression in enhancing its ecommerce strategy to facilitate future growth

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he German family business, Schumacher Packaging, considers itself an outstanding packaging manufacturer that came to life in 1948. Although established by Wulf Schumacher, Björn and Hendrik Schumacher have taken

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over their family’s legacy and under their leadership, the company has surpassed its own expectations to be one of the leading packaging companies in Europe. Björn, who is now the company’s Managing Director, discusses with us the strategies and innovation

that have led to the company’s progression as it continues to strive for a turnover goal of €1 billion by 2022. “We made an acquisition in Birmingham, England, two years ago that has allowed us to have a more geographical set up in Europe that supports

Schumacher Packaging GmbH Greven plant

Björn Schumacher, CEO Schumacher Packaging Group

our customers both locally and internationally.

I feel that acquisition set us in a strong position to provide the level of capabilities that we do,” he begins.

Headquartered in Ebersdorf bei Coburg, Upper Franconia, Schumacher Packaging is currently led by the third generation of Schumachers and specializes in customized packaging systems made of corrugated and solid board. With 26 sites spread across Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, England and the Netherlands, the business is one of Europe’s largest family-run companies in the sector, and it keeps getting bigger. Recently, the company has implemented new developments at its Greven plant, which was originally built in 2014. According to Björn, it was always in the pipeline to double the production capacity,

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Schumacher Packaging GmbH but as a result of the business’s recent impressive growth, the vision is coming into fruition.

Unique technology

While the company’s strategy at the beginning of 2021 was to remain cautious regarding its investment planning owing to the uncertainties inflicted by Covid-19, at the same time, the demand for corrugated board packaging exploded, propelling the business forward and giving it the go-ahead for Greven. These expansion developments are now underway and the production facility is quickly becoming one of the world’s largest multi-mega plants to date and replacing its Ebersdorf headquarters. By the end of June of this year, approximately €70 million had gone into creating 200 new jobs and a 7000 square meter expansion of the production

area. Following that, the company is building another 14,000 square meters on the factory premises.

Björn is happy to share that completing a project of this scale would not have been possible without the assistance of one particular partner: BHS Corrugated, a global provider of mechanical and plant engineering, lifecycle service and digital solutions for the complex requirements of the corrugated cardboard industry. In his opinion, the mission for Schumacher Packaging has always been to pioneer digital print technology, which has only recently become a highly innovative avenue. Although it is still fairly new to the industry, Björn believes it is the future of printing. “These printers are much more flexible, they don’t require any additional set ups, and they support a level of convenience that is equivalent to any other office printer,

except it is a much bigger size,” he shares, “This is why BHS is a crucial partner to us.

The family-owned company is based in Bavaria, which means that geographically, they are very close to us, while globally, they are a massive business and at least 50 percent of packaging plants around the globe use its machines. This, I feel, makes them market pioneers. Relationally, we enjoy a close cooperation with BHS; if they invest in anything new, the owner is immediately on the phone with me and wants to know if Schumacher would be interested in being a pilot customer, which is essentially how the Greven story began,” he adds. He continues to highlight that BHS is passionate about the industry moving away from directly printing on the corrugator. This is how it came up with a way to combine Schumacher’s corrugator with a digital print machine and produce paper reel prints before the paper

The RSR®- digital printer at the Schumacher facility in Greven

BHS Corrugated BHS Corrugated is Schumacher Group’s long-standing partner in providing solutions for the corrugated industry. The cooperation ranging back to over 50 years has since been based on a principle embedded in the corporate philosophy of BHS Corrugated: to significantly increase the corrugators’ productivity and boost profitability. The joint mission is mirrored in reality. Peak performance and numerous records have already been achieved by the corrugator, designed by BHS Corrugated, at Schumacher’s main plant in Ebersdorf, Germany. During the many years of collaboration, BHS Corrugated contributed to Schumacher Group’s internationalization, e.g. by supplying plants in Poland or making major investments in England. The long-standing partnership drives mutual performance of both companies. The currently largest and most challenging joint project is the expansion of the plant in Greven, Germany, where in addition to a new corrugator (design speed of 450 m/min), the world’s first digital printing machine from BHS Corrugated has been started-up. Furthermore, roll handling at the Greven plant will in future be realized via a fully automatic shuttle system. Both partners are thus setting a milestone in the corrugated industry. Key to success? Trust and innovative spirit represent the cornerstones of the partnership and form the foundation for long-standing future collaboration.

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Schumacher Packaging achieved EcoVadis platinum status for its facility in Wrocław/Poland

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Schumacher Packaging GmbH runs into the machine. “In Greven, we have a massive digital print machine that has been built with the assistance of BHS, which, as far as I know, is the first and only one of its kind,” Björn expresses.

New technology of this level has also encouraged the company to push itself further and explore opportunities in the ecommerce market. “It’s really the future of marketing for the packaging industry. The truth is that Schumacher has always been ahead of the industry when it comes to the capabilities of our machines, which has given us the space to understand the needs of the ecommerce sector. Accordingly, we have set up our mills, machines and technologies to

be able to serve that specific market segment.

If we look at our portfolio, which ranges from major to very niche industries, about 30 percent of fast moving consumer goods, like food or automotive industries, supports our revenue.

This is why we are taking the opportunity to invest another third of our turnover into ecommerce. Although these products have helped the standard economy grow from two to five percent, ecommerce has grown at least 10 percent or more, and for our business, this means that we have seen a huge increase since October of 2020,” he notes. However, for Björn’s team, this means that the past few months has been incredibly busy. “Thankfully,

Papier- und Kartonfabrik Varel (PKV) Schumacher Packaging and Papier- und Kartonfabrik Varel (PKV) have enjoyed a trusting partnership for many years, for which we are very grateful. PKV are a medium-sized family business with about 600 employees, and produce cardboard and containerboard for the German and international packaging industry on the basis of recovered paper using the latest environmentally-friendly technologies. We are at the heart of the packaging solutions of many well-known products. With an annual production capacity of over 925,000 tonnes on four production lines, we are one of the largest production sites in the European paper industry.

it is cooling down now because people are going on holiday and spending their money elsewhere, which is good because that gives everyone in the warehouses a bit of breathing space,” he expresses.

Aside from its innovation in creating packaging solutions for the international market, the business is equally as excited to support its green strategies. This, in the words of Björn, comes down to the advantages of being a family-owned company, because the business is able to fulfill important decisions with very few bureaucratic barriers.

“We investigated our status regarding our carbon footprint and then we looked into all the areas where there was room for improvement. Additionally, the market is actually pushing us to do this. It is no surprise that becoming eco-friendly is a massive demand across all industries, which is why companies like EcoVadis are doing fantastic work in helping businesses achieve better green practices,” he notes. The Parisian company is depended upon by many specialty stock list companies like Nike and Amazon,

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The RSR®- digital printer at the Schumacher facility in Greven

who use EcoVadis to ensure that their suppliers are taking sustainable steps, whether this is with regards to the use of water or electricity, or whether the company is ethically sound in how it treats its people. “These businesses don’t want to leave a negative impression at their own risk, especially because many of us are web-based portals. With EcoVadis, we are proud to announce that we have made the necessary adjustments and continue to do so across all our sites. This is how we were able to receive fantastic ratings that range from bronze medal, up to a platinum, which is the highest level that we recently received in Poland,” he shares.

Quick thinking

Additional advantages to being a flexible company encompasses the ability to facilitate quick decision making, hands-on management, the agility to respond to market turbulence, and keep employees motivated on a personal level. As one can imagine, these measures

Hörmann Logistik Acting as a general contractor, Hörmann Logistik implement innovative warehouse logistics solutions ranging from automatic high-bay warehouses or miniload warehouses to conveyor technology, control and warehouse management systems for various industries.

The corrugated board industry is one of the most important industries where we realized a lot of full automated high bay warehouses for finished goods and vertical storages for raw material in several countries and for several customers.

With special storage solutions we are able to store in a flexible way different sizes of load units, without any pallet or up to 12 pallets under the load.

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Schumacher Packaging GmbH proved quintessential when the pandemic struck businesses across the world and forced many industries to reimagine their operations. “Our team urgently and very quickly faced the challenge of adapting to the fast-changing circumstances. So, we made greater capacities available; our employees were fantastic in committing themselves to getting the job done and our suppliers have been just as reliable and supported us by delivering more than we expected,” he explains.

Further to this, the business was also able to take on another supportive venture in helping customers remain safe by producing plexi-glass windows that were soon used as partitions in hotels, restaurants and offices.

“We invested in this product made of paper with a corrugated window in between and we set up a web shop as well to make them available to as many clients as possible. We thought that partition walls in restaurants and administration sectors were urgently needed and they were quite successful in Germany,” Björn notes.

The RSR®- digital printer at the Schumacher facility in Greven

Schumacher Packaging GmbH www.schumacher-packaging.com/en/ index.html Services: Packaging manufacturers

Increased integration

Now, as the world veers away from the worst of the Covid-19 crisis, Schumacher Packaging is determined to refine its operations to a world-class standard. In doing so, it hopes to incorporate greater in-house abilities to become a more independent business. “The next plan is to stabilize our supplies, which will begin with investing in our own paper mills.

At the moment, we have two mills in Poland for recycled paper, and those facilities are producing around 50 percent of our needs.

However, at the rate that we are growing, we need to adapt. The biggest problem in our industry, which has not been made easier by the pandemic, is acquiring raw material, and as long as we are integrated within the supply chain, we face the risk of suffering from the difficulties that our suppliers face.

“As an integrated company with our own paper mills, we can guarantee our customers a high level of supply security - and develop a stronger trust in our name. This is why the next step is to invest at least €100 million into our paper mills and expand the capacity at one of our sites in Myszków, which will double our capacity within the next two to three years,” Björn shares. As a company that already hosts an expansive infrastructure, it will be interesting to catch up with Björn again in a few years’ time to learn more about how no box is big enough to contain the potential of Schumacher Packaging. v

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The ultimate recycler Ken Bowles

Smurfit Kappa, an FTSE 100 company, is one of the world’s leading providers of paper-based packaging, and continues to pioneer advances in technology that push for sustainable solutions

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ince we last spoke with the Irish business, Smurfit Kappa, two significant drivers have swept through the company’s operations to keep it on the edge of innovation. “Firstly, there was progress in e-commerce and the extension of the customer’s ability to shop in retail environments, which was also catalyzed by the impact of Covid-19,” shares Ken Bowles, the company’s CFO. “The pandemic forced retailers and suppliers to move online, and led to an increase in the consumption of paper-based packaging in store retail. As a consequence of that, we have seen a greater awareness of the consequences of waste, and therefore a much

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keener desire to move towards sustainable forms of packaging that might not have been around before,” he says. With these two drivers in mind, the company’s mission is to provide the same level of excitement for the customer’s unboxing experience that would be expected in-store, while continuing to uphold its integrity for sustainability.

Over the past year, Smurfit Kappa has had to embrace the challenges posed by living with a global pandemic. Without the possibility of having its customers visit its centers, it has chosen to digitally engage with consumers through initiatives such as webinars, online training and digital meetings. This was just

another way in which Smurfit Kappa has been able to think creatively and innovatively in adapting to the ever-changing climate of its industry. “We want to reach as many customers as possible, and share our knowledge to help them gain real business value, while enhancing our digital lead generation capabilities, and ultimately, the business’s strengths as a whole,” he says.

“We are transforming the effectiveness of packaging to ensure that recycling is easier than ever, and there are a number of ways in which we are achieving this. For example, this year, we launched our eBottle products portfolio, which consists of customized solutions that are

Smurfit Kappa

designed to send bottles through the supply chain, so they arrive in perfect condition at their start to be used again. In another instance, we’ve released our Safe & Green punnet portfolio, which replaces plastic punnets in supermarkets.

Similarly, in simple wrappings like AgroPaper, which is used for farming to cover produce, we have innovated those designs so that once the season is over, the paper that was used can degrade and become part of the compost; no waste and fully biodegradable! An example of this can be seen in Latin America, where we produce what we call the BanaBag, which is intended to replace the plastic packaging that bananas are often grown in,” Ken informs us.

Clearly, from what he has shared, the motivation for Smurfit Kappa is to move the conversation away from the use of less sustainable materials, and towards renewable, recyclable and biodegradable solutions.

New product launch

By infiltrating a vast range of industries, as Ken has said, Smurfit Kappa is ensuring it can assist numerous businesses with the elimination of their plastic packaging. In addition, by creating a streamlined alternative, the company will also make the process of recycling far easier to ensure that the recyclable material returns either back to nature, or to Smurfit Kappa.

“The goal is to see a box at least ten times if its recycled properly. To facilitate this, our strategy is to take six million tons of waste and make new products with it, which I believe we do really well,” he adds.

“Yesterday (October 7th, 2021), we launched our new health and beauty packaging, which again, is designed to replace the less sustainable products currently on offer for products like fragrances, cosmetics, skin and hair care.

Complementing that, we have tamper-proof packaging for vitamin containers, supplements and sports nutrition, which is very new, and for the first time in our industry, we will have a product that will be able to replace those ridged

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plastic containers for detergents with corrugated board. Our focus is always the end-of-life solution to ensure that the container degrades or comes back to us and we make new boxes out of it, preventing an exorbitant plastic waste problem,” he shares.

“It’s up to us to supply the packaging that ensures that once the item reaches the customer, two instances are covered. Firstly, when the product arrives in perfect condition, and it is opened, customers are given the same brand experience they would have if they were in-store, although they may be in the comfort of their own home,” Ken begins to explain, “and the second aspect to ensuring responsible and successful packaging, occurs when the customer wishes to return their product. I think that is where the next phase of change and growth will be, because many online retailers ship their products in plastic packaging, which generally makes it more difficult for the consumer to send the product back easily. To solve this issue, we

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have products that allow clients to return the item in the box it came in. With the use of our double tape box for simplicity, it just means that if a client doesn’t like it, they can put it back in the box, seal it with the label and send it back,” explains Ken.

Sustainability movement

He continues to share that staying ahead of this level of innovation requires the business to invest heavily in its expansions. Accordingly, the company recently opened a transit lab for e-commerce packaging in Northampton, England, with the hopes that this development will encompass the full range of capabilities for the company’s packaging solutions. “This is another one of those aspects that continue to set us apart from our competitors. With the help of the new lab, we can supply clients with boxes for Amazon, because we now support the pre-certification process. So rather than wait between four to eight weeks by going through

Amazon’s process, we can get that sorted for clients in a much quicker time.

“Aside from that, other major investments we have in the pipeline will all be strategized to meet our sustainability goals. We have a very firm target for a reduction of 55 percent of CO2 by 2030. We also have other investments in our European paper system that will absolutely help us meet that goal, and with any luck, even earlier than 2030. If we backtrack to the start of our journey and remember the core values of what we believe in, the amount of money that we invest into this organization is absolutely worth it, and we are going to continue to do whatever it takes to make sustainability the top of everyone’s agenda moving forward,” he emphasizes.

As he brings his discussion to a close, Ken shares his hopes for the industry, and where he envisions the sustainability movement going.

According to him, the underlying mantra that

Smurfit Kappa helps the company to operate so effectively is: leave no impact on how resources are retrieved from nature, and no impact on how nature is left after the resources are consumed. This is something he hopes will be adopted by the rest of the world in due course. “The improvement I would like to see in the e-commerce experience is the ability for the consumer to get those boxes back to us. I think we all like to think of ourselves as great recyclers, and for the most part, we are doing a great job. However, today’s consumer is faced with corrugated and

paper packaging at their door, and they don’t necessarily have the mechanisms to get it back to us in a clean fashion. This means that the packaging often ends up in their black bin, or it goes into the green bin where it is co-mingled with other grades of recyclable packaging.

The crux of our work is to get that product back to being as clean as possible, in order for us to make more boxes with it, and overall, I think the consumer being able to recycle with greater simplicity will improve that e-commerce circularity hugely,” Ken concludes. v

Flint Group Paper & Board Flint Group Paper & Board supply the global corrugated packaging industry with an extensive portfolio of inks, coatings and service solutions. Working more than 20 years alongside Smurfit Kappa globally, we are pleased to offer solutions focused on sustainability and the well-being of our planet and societies around the world. We are committed to supporting packaging markets with responsibly-built products and sustainable solutions designed for circular economies. This commitment to the environment is supported by our TerraCode range of inks, which are built using bio-renewable raw materials, our continuous improvement programs and LEAN manufacturing techniques, and our uniquely designed 360° ServiceCode platform, which drives out waste, cost & complexity. Our product and service solutions are carefully crafted to help reduce our customers’ scope 1, 2 & 3 footprint – today and tomorrow. With a strong focus on robust and responsible corrugated products supported by top-notch service and support, you can rely on us to deliver secure supply worldwide.

Smurfit Kappa www.smurfitkappa.com Services: Packaging solutions

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A sustainable state of mind

A FFB

Principally engaged in the production and sale of crude palm oil and crude palm kernel oil, the actions of R.E.A. Holdings plc (REA) are helping to counter some of the misconceptions of a hotly debated industry 72 l www.manufacturing-today.com

fully listed UK public company established in 1906, R.E.A. Holdings plc (REA) originated from a London plantation agency house called The Rubber Estate Agency Limited. Today, REA is principally engaged in the cultivation of oil palms in the province of East Kalimantan in Indonesia and in the production and sale of crude palm oil and crude palm kernel oil.

“It was in 1982 that REA, together with two other UK plantation companies, started a scheme for the development of a new oil palm estate on a 6000 hectare concession in North Sumatra, called the Tasik Project.This was an important step in the development of the REA group’s latter day Indonesian interests,” explains REA Holdings’ Managing Director, Carol Gysin. “REA subsequently divested its Sumatran and other interests and, recognising the potential in East

Kalimantan, set up to develop a new, single site oil palm scheme in 1989.The first nurseries were established in 1992, and REA now holds some 75,000 hectares of land allocations, of which approximately half is planted with oil palm.”

Palm oil is a much-discussed commodity, but, as Carol goes on to detail, there are a number of misconceptions that people have about it and the way it is sourced. “Palm oil is the highest yielding edible vegetable oil, with oil palm providing approximately 35 percent of the global supply of major vegetable oils from around nine percent of the land cultivated,” she notes. “Oil palm also yields four-to-seven tonnes of oil per hectare compared with yields of less than one tonne per hectare for competitor oilseed crops.

“When palm oil is grown and produced responsibly, working in close conjunction with local communities and governments, the land

REA Holdings

Employee housing

farmed can be managed to control and reduce the environmental impact. This is something we are dedicated to and we promote responsible practice throughout all the areas that we operate.”

Palm oil is a perennial crop, meaning that unlike most other crops which are annual, it has a productive lifecycle of at least 25 years.

This means that, rather than being replanted every year, existing palms can be harvested over the course of 20 plus years. The vegetable oil is a great source of tocotrienols, a form of vitamin E, and studies show that this antioxidant provides protection to the body’s cells that can reduce the risk of certain health problems such as heart disease and cancer. Crude palm oil is also the richest natural source of carotenoids which contribute to combatting vitamin A deficiency. Polyunsaturated oils, such as soybean

Harvesting FFB

oil, rapeseed oil and sunflower oil also require partial hydrogenation before they can be used for shortening and other solid fat applications, whereas crude palm oil does not.

“We understand consumers’ concerns regarding the production of palm oil, and we share many of these but, as we have shown, it is possible to produce palm oil in a sustainable manner,” Carol stresses. “Major palm oil producers have adopted policies, such as NDPE, in the past few years that adhere to much tighter standards and the sector needs to continue to address concerns and prove to consumers that it is possible to produce palm oil sustainably.

“REA works to improve yields (both by planting higher yielding cultivars produced by professional plant breeders as well as crop management decision-making driven by science to produce site-specific best management

practices) in order to reduce pressure on remaining forest land. The best way to educate consumers is to show real-life examples of sustainable supply chains involving smallholders, communities and companies implementing sustainable best practices, including conservation efforts, to optimise production whilst minimising environmental impacts. Verification and certification schemes to demonstrate that desired stakeholder outcomes are being achieved must be practical and fit for purpose.”

REA Holdings’ President Director in Indonesia, Luke Robinow, continues along a similar vein: “We take our responsibility to develop land according to best practice guidelines and with respect to local communities incredibly seriously.

We have been members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) since 2007 and adhere to the International Sustainability and

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Loading FFB for transportation to oil mills

Biogas facility producing renewable energy

Tank storage

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Carbon Certification (ISCC) and Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) standards.

“More recently – since 2012 – we have generated electricity at our two methane capture facilities using the by-products of processing oil palm crop. Effluent from our mills is reprocessed at our biogas facilities which supply renewable electricity to our mills, estates, housing, and the surrounding communities. The electricity is distributed across our operations and local communities. Before the installation of our power plants, generators fed by diesel were used to power our operations. The switch to a renewable energy source has ended our reliance on diesel generators and successfully helped to reduce the GHG emissions of local communities by reducing their reliance on diesel generators for electricity. Other by-products are not wasted either. The fibre from fruit bunches is used as fuel for the boilers, empty fruit bunches are recycled as organic compost and boiler ash is used to make bricks for houses.”

Today, REA can also be found working with an international funding body to establish a micro-finance scheme for smallholder farmers to access funds for intensifying their oil palm yields and develop alternative revenue streams in order to reduce pressure on forest areas outside REA’s concession areas, as well as to improve the traceability of the group’s produce (fresh fruit bunch or FFB) supply chain. Other initiatives include fire prevention and training for local community groups, and programmes to promote greater efficiency of waste management and recycling schemes in conjunction with regional initiatives.

“Conservation work is also a principal element of REA’s policy towards the achievement of sustainability,” Luke states.

“Currently a total of approximately 20,000 hectares have been set aside as conservation reserves within the group’s land bank, accounting for some 23 percent of the group’s land.

REA’s conservation department (REA Kon) was established in 2008 and aims to exceed, rather than just meet, all the requirements of the sustainability bodies by which the group is certified. REA Kon’s conservation efforts are augmented by close technical cooperation with independent research scientists and experts from local and international institutions and universities, as well as with Indonesia’s environmental NGOs.” Globally, the palm oil industry is believed to support some three million jobs.The REA group presently employs around 8,000 people.

“We endeavour to provide competitive salary packages, opportunities for career development and a decent standard of living on the estates for

REA Holdings employees and their families,” Luke enthuses. “We offer an annual programme of in-house training, participation in external training courses and regular outbound activities for our employees.

“Wherever possible the group seeks to employ local people and contractors in an effort to contribute to the local economy and create a stable workforce. We also buy oil palm FFB from 4,300 smallholder farmers through 51 local producer cooperatives providing regular incomes for these farmers and their families.

These smallholders and communities are provided with training free of charge on how to improve their yields, as well as financial literacy and business development training.”

Permanent employees and their families who wish to live on the plantation are eligible for housing, which is all equipped with electricity and potable water, while free medical care and schooling is also available for residents. “Good quality housing and community facilities for employees are a priority for REA,” Luke says.

“The group continues to build houses using ‘batako’ bricks, which are produced in-house by mixing boiler ash from the mills with cement.

Use of this material has significantly reduced both the cost and environmental footprint of new houses in recent years. Each year, there is a programme for building new houses and renovating existing properties and infrastructure for families living on the group’s estates. Village emplacements are provided with medical clinics, crèches, mosques, churches, schools, sports facilities and markets.”

As global populations and GDP continues to grow, the use of palm oil as the most widely used vegetable oil, is set to continue to increase.

This, accompanied by the increasing use of biofuels, which can significantly lower carbon emissions, means demand for palm oil will continue its upward trajectory. “As discussed, the challenge is for palm oil producers to prove to consumers that they can act sustainably. Once we overcome that hurdle, the opportunities become even more significant,” Carol enthuses.

“As the world continues to demand the lowering of carbon emissions, palm oil, given its higher yields, is ideally placed to provide a greater share of the supply of vegetable oils to meet increasing demand. By investing in yield intensification and emerging technologies, palm oil companies can play a vital role in meeting rising demand for both oil and reduced emissions going forward, both internally and externally through the communities with which they work.”

For REA, its aim is to continue to grow through optimising the use of its available land areas while continually striving to minimise the

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environmental impacts through agricultural best practices. “We aim to plough back wealth into the local community through responsible expansion of smallholder schemes and developing further renewable energy sources, allowing for potential gasification of vehicles, thereby further reducing use of fossil fuels and reducing our carbon footprint,” Carol concludes.

“Ultimately, while retaining our responsibility to our investors and other stakeholders, our

role is to provide a healthy legacy for future generations in the company and in the local community in Indonesia, where we recognise our status as a guest.” v

REA Holdings www.rea.co.uk Products: Crude palm oil and crude palm kernel oil

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More than the metal DeWys Metal Solutions is looking forward to next year when it will celebrate 45 years in the fabrication business. In the buildup to this milestone, the company reflects on how its success has been welded together by a dedicated crew with an exemplary craftsmanship 76 l www.manufacturing-today.com

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ark DeWys strongly believed in being involved in his community and investing in the lives around him. When came his untimely passing, his company saw it fit to continue those values and pursue an enriched culture that prioritizes high quality work and customer service. “Mark was an incredibly hard-working individual. He started this business from a little red barn behind his family home and

now DeWys owns a 130,000 square foot manufacturing facility. None of that would have been possible without his guidance and leadership,” begins Mark Schoenborn, the current President of DeWys Metal Solutions.

Based in the rural outskirts of Marne, Michigan, DeWys is one year away from celebrating its 45th anniversary as one of the leading turnkey metal fabricators in the US market. “We are a contract manufacturer making a difference. We

DeWys Metal Solutions

comes from, so we’ve really honed in on automating a large portion of our processes to make for more efficient business,” says Mark.

Unique university

have invested largely in automation and robotics technology because we’re highly enthusiastic about maintaining our pioneering innovation.

We cover the usual laser forming and welding, but, above that, we also have full powder coating and contract manufacturing capabilities, which is quite a unique feature for contract manufacturers,” Mark explains.

Whether the job requires manufacturing or production, the business has invested

a substantial amount of money to be a leading competitor in the metal sector and has subsequently included in its inventory six additional lasers, with fully automated cutting equipment. “We also have automated forming capabilities including eight to ten fully automated robotic welding cells, with collaborative robots that conduct fastener insertions, tapping, grinding and powder coating.

This is where the majority of our growth

He continues to add that at the moment, the industry is suffering from a talent shortage and the pool from which to recruit skilled staff is quickly drying up, which is why DeWys is transitioning more and more of its facilities to robotics. Therefore, with the efficiency of this plan encouraging a greater revenue, the business has been fortunate enough to expand its operations. “We’ve incorporated a 50,000 square foot manufacturing facility named ReFab Metal Fabrication that supports diverse metal fabrication capabilities, which was purchased in the fall of 2020. It is equipped to handle similar operations that we do at our main location, with the addition of even quicker turnaround times.

“Recently, we also launched a new company called DeWys Stainless Solutions, where we offer our dedicated equipment, team members, and resources that are focused on high quality steel and aluminum. Since we kicked off those operations, business has absolutely exceeded our expectations, and we have seen a great deal of growth in that department. We are also always looking at other services like laser welding, tube bending and processing, but in my opinion, the launch of DeWys Stainless Solutions is our most recent success when it comes to the DeWys Metal Solutions companies” shares Mark.

Alongside the company’s impressive cuttingedge technology, the ultimate feature that Mark is incredibly proud of is the DeWys University

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It is a testament of our people, the work that they’re doing, and our measures to ensure that we bring in the right people who fit our values. Furthermore, we received our MedAccred certification, which is a new global certification for the medical industry, that has proven to be quite difficult to receive, which is why I am incredibly proud that we have this under our belt as well which was founded by Jon DeWys, CEO of DeWys Metal Solutions. The educational program consists of five on-site trainers who are assigned to support both new team members and upskill those already in their tenure. This, he feels, is also DeWys’ approach to combatting the difficulties the industry faces in recruiting qualified staff. “Their full-time job is to provide training and advancement opportunities for new and existing team members. It’s also designed with a classroomtype setting, and a hands-on shop floor that provides crucial experience for those looking to make a career of this trade. I believe the University is such a unique facet to the business, and gives us the ability to support different curriculums for our core processes,” he says.

Moving away from the technical side of the business, and onto the company culture, Mark emphasizes that one of the elements that the leadership team at DeWys has worked stringently to refine is its core values. “About four years ago, we began working more intentionally to focus on our culture, ethos and staff promotions. In doing so, we introduced a robust recognition rewards program, which is called ACCT, and stands for ‘Advancement, Character, Customer Astonishment, and Talent. Above that, we advocate in team transparency; we do monthly shop meetings, and we communicate our successes and challenges frequently.” However, what Mark really appreciates about this strategy is that it has taught the company how to celebrate each other’s achievements and encourage an atmosphere of value and support.

These methods seem to be paying off as for the past three years, DeWys has been named ‘Best and Brightest Company to Work for in West Michigan and the Nation’. “It is a testament of our people, the work that they’re doing, and

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our measures to ensure that we bring in the right people who fit our values. Furthermore, we received our MedAccred certification, which is a new global certification for the medical industry, that has proven to be quite difficult to receive, which is why I am incredibly proud that we have this under our belt as well,” he expresses.

Passionate people

According to Mark, an additional practice that DeWys put in place to help regulate the company’s inspiring culture is through hosting anonymous and confidential ‘stay interviews’ on a regular basis, rather than focusing on the negatives of an exit interview. “Although we still do some exit interviews, we choose to redirect our resources to finding out why people choose to remain with DeWys, what they like about the company, areas that we are succeeding in, and whether there are other aspects that we could be strengthening. We share those findings with our leadership team at our monthly meetings, and it helps us refine what we do from a personnel engagement standpoint. I think that engaging with our teams and understanding their values is so important. Our people could go and work anywhere, but I believe our passion to create a company in which our employees feel honored is what really sets us apart,” he shares.

Having nurtured a united and dedicated culture that inspires the DeWys team to support each other through the highs and lows, the company was able to pull together during the turbulence that was Covid-19. “Thankfully, we were deemed an essential manufacturer due to some of the products we produce going directly to the medical field. We were one of the companies that helped build many of the medical beds that were being used in makeshift triage centers. Our team really came together and put in ridiculous hours to help as best as they could. This resulted in us working seven

DeWys Metal Solutions days a week, 24 hours a day to keep up with the manufacturing and powder coating demands.

We faired quite well considering everything that happened in conjunction with the production, such as managing the safety of our team, and trying to prevent a break-out from happening within the factory.”

Focused future

There was an instance, Mark explains, in which a key customer reached out to DeWys seeking urgent assistance. “It was during a weekend, and they called to let me know that more beds were needed immediately. So again, our team worked seven days a week, there were long nights, some weekends – an excessive amount of overtime, but everybody played their part and did a fantastic job. I really believe that situations like that test the character of your team and their values, and that was a real testament of who we are; they really stepped up. It was an unbelievable achievement that we could be involved in of some of the refurbishing and production for the people that were ill,” he adds.

Although Mark acknowledges that it was quite a

challenging time, he is pleased with the group’s efforts and considers himself blessed to be working with the dedicated DeWys team.

Now, as the industry stabilizes its footing once again, DeWys is expecting a stronger season of growth over the next five years. “We will be taking on further acquisitions and introducing multiple capabilities and resources. I also think that DeWys Stainless Solutions will be well recognized as a great addition to the business.

At the moment, it’s expanding beyond what we could have imagined, and we are excited about the direction that it’s heading in.”

He finally concludes by sharing that DeWys will keep diversifying its offerings, with a focused reliance on customer feedback. Taking into consideration what has already been put in place to maintain the company’s success, Mark is hopeful that the next five years will be just as fruitful as the last. v

DeWys Metal Solutions www.dewys.com Services: Metal fabrication

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Ionic innovations For 35 years ResinTech has been a leader in ion exchange and manufacturing, and now it celebrates that success with a new high-tech facility 80 l www.manufacturing-today.com

R

esinTech has been developing its industry-leading resin-based technologies since 1986. From its genesis, the company has built a reputation for providing high quality, whole life services from the forefront of ionic exchange research and development.

Ion exchange resins are a kind of material that is particularly well suited to the removal

of ionic impurities. This is because the resin has a high capacity for ions that are found in low concentrations, it is also stable and readily regenerated, meaning that the process is effective regardless of scale. As a result, you can use ResinTech exchange resins in home water softeners, as well as large-scale utility installations.

In addition to ion exchange resin solutions, ResinTech offers activated carbon materials

ResinTech control elements of various sectors, ResinTech is interested in pushing the boundaries of resin application technology. The company invests continually in a resource group of scientists who work full time researching these materials; this group is not only at the forefront of scientific research in this area, but it is able to provide recommendation assistance to prospective customers, in order to ensure ResinTech provides the most cost-effective services all around.

Resin technology is the product of a complex scientific process, and it is impor tant that each batch of resin meets a certain quality standard given that it is distributed throughout a number of key industries. This is why every batch of resin sold by ResinTech is tested comprehensively through a full battery of Quality Control (QC) procedures, before it is placed into active inventory. Impor tantly, every QC process includes propriety tests, and standards developed for specific end uses.

Safe in the knowledge that all the company’s products are manufactured

to specifications that meet or exceed all published standards, ResinTech customers are also offered lifelong support through ResinTech’s technical support program. As stated on the company website, this group is dedicated to ‘better working ion exchangers through excellent products, and the best technical support available anywhere’.

Using its existing infrastructure and team of experts, ResinTech can provide scientific support for its clients through a number of laboratory-based services. Armed with what the ResinTech website describes as ‘possibly the best understanding of ion exchange in the world’, the company is able to run specialist tests on resin and model its performance, in order to provide a projection that most accurately depicts which materials a customer may need.

ResinTech’s support of its customer base does not end there, however. Through the company’s effective use of simulation technology, specifically developed for the purpose of understanding ion exchange applications, it is able to accurately predict the

for chlorine removal, and its own ReSTore water softening treatment. To support the functionality of both, the company has also released a range of fiberglass tanks; this cutting-edge technology allows for the safe storage of ResinTech materials in composite pressure vessels, meaning ResinTech customers can reliably store materials and membranes for longer periods of time.

By offering a range of products with numerous applications, ResinTech is able to provide comprehensive services to a number of industries, including the water, pharmaceutical, energy and food processing sectors. The unique materials produced by this company can be used for deionization, softening, metal removal and product purification, as well as resource recovery and pollution control.

In addition to providing important services that support the sustainability and quality

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ResinTech

performance of chemical processing, product purification and waste treatment.

The company’s dedication to the people and industries it serves became even more important during the uncertainty of a global pandemic; whilst many of us were in lockdown, ResinTech was amongst a handful of businesses that remained open in order to provide essential services. ResinTech is a family of companies, which includes Aries Filterworks and ACM Technologies; as a collective, the group provides treatment services that are essential to the continuity of municipal, military

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and healthcare operations. This illustrates the importance of resin technology, and the ways in which it can, as an industry, support the daily lives of many.

As a result of its dedication to quality control, and pushing the boundaries of what resin technology can do, ResinTech has seen ongoing success, even in the face of the challenges brought on by Covid-19. In September 2020, ResinTech moved to its new headquarters in Camden, New Jersey.

This new development is valued at around $138 million, and includes 353,000 square-feet

of construction on ResinTech’s new 27-acre campus, just two miles from City Center Philadelphia; the company follows American Water and Subaru of America in its move to the Camden region.

With a new headquarters that drastically improves accessibility, ResinTech will be able to produce up to one million cubic feet of strong acid resin a year. The new high-tech facility, which began production in July, is the largest of its kind on the East coast, and the first new US plant to produce ion exchange resins in more than 30 years.

As ResinTech celebrates 35 years of pushing the boundaries and capabilities of ion exchange resin technology, it also continues to provide invaluable services to the water industry and beyond. With production facilities and warehouses across the Midwest, the West Coast and Florida, it is clear that this company will be continuing to innovate for a long time to come. v

ResinTech www.resintech.com Services: Ion exchange resin manufacturer

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