Strategy | Fakuma 2014 review
Co-injection leads Milacron into system solutions
The acquisitions of Mold-Masters and Kortec have set Milacron on a transformative path that aims to set the machinery group up as a provider of single-source process technology solutions. Chris Smith finds out more
Wind back to the start of the 21st century and the
prospects did not look good for US machinery group Milacron; sales were in decline and debts mounting. The global recession of 2008 only intensified the problems. However, financial restructuring followed by the sale of the business in 2012 to new private equity owners CCMP Capital Advisers – together with the upturn in the US machinery market – has set the company on a new and transformative path. That is most evident in its injection moulding business, where the acquisition of the Mold-Masters hot runner operation in February 2013 and the purchase of co-injection technology firm Kortec early this year marked the beginning of a process intended to see Milacron transform itself from machine supplier to a single-source advanced technology solutions provider. “Kortec is the latest example of technology we can
plug into our portfolio,” said COO of Milacron’s melt delivery and control, fluid technologies, and finance and shared services divisions, John Gallagher at the Fakuma fair in Germany. A member of the Milacron board since the company’s acquisition by CCMP back in 2012, Gallagher took on his expanded full time role within the company in July of this year. “We saw an opportunity in the co-injection multi-layer approach,” he said. “We started through Mold-Masters with the E-Multi and the opportunity to place a second injection unit on a machine. With Kortec we saw the opportunity to leapfrog ahead.”
www.injectionworld.com The acquisition of Mold-Masters plugged a signifi-
cant gap in Milacron’s injection moulding product line. The company had long offered metal cutting fluids through its CimCool division, mould components via DME, and injection machines through its Milacron Plastics Technologies and Ferromatik Milacron divisions. Mold-Masters added hot runner and melt management to that technology portfolio. However, while Mold-Masters had a co-injection moulding solution with its E-Multi auxiliary injection unit and hot runner components and controllers – which it had marketed under the IRIS name - it was an equipment package rather than a packaged solution. Customers had to take on a lot of the development work. Kortec’s coinjection offering was delivery of a turnkey solution but it was attempting to do that from what was a very small company, according to Gallagher. Within the Milacron group, the Kortec business now
has access to all the cost efficiencies of a large global engineering company, says Gallagher. Prime among these is Milacron’s global footprint – the company manufactures in North America, Germany, Czech Republic, China, Korea and India, where it recently com- mitted $30m of new investment. It also operates an India-based Shared Services operation, where it has some 180 engineers carrying out application engineer- ing, thermal and fluid flow analysis and CAD work. These group resources are now being directed onto Kortec’s co-injection technologies. “Kortec has a system
November/December 2014 | INJECTION WORLD 17
Main image: Milacron aims to plug-in Kortec’s
co-injection packaging
technology to become a
single-source technology solution supplier
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