NEWS Engel looks to strong recovery
The 2021 edition of Engel’s Symposium customer event was mostly conducted online to enable as many people as possible to participate from around the world while Covid health and travel concerns continue. The E-Symposium, which took place at Engel’s Schwertberg HQ in Austria in June, had an extensive program of keynote presen- tations and business talks, a virtual showroom with 25 machine exhibits, and virtual plant tours. There were several thousand partici- pants from nearly 90 countries and, in addition, Engel Machinery Shanghai was able to invite 120 guests to an in-person event. Engel experienced a downtown in sales in 2020, just like many other injection moulding machinery groups. Group sales in its 2020/21 fiscal year dropped by 15% to €1.1bn due to the widespread impact of the pandemic and weakness in the automotive market.
Sales optimism But Christoph Steger, Engel’s CSO, said at a press conference at the sympo- sium that positive change started in November 2020 and even demand from the automotive industry picked up again after two very difficult years. With recovery continuing in 2021, Engel expects to grow again in 2021/22 and sales could rise by up to 20%, said Steger. The European market’s
share of Engel’s 2020/21 sales fell to 45% from 54%
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screw. In the second stage, the melt is transferred to a second screw for injection into the cavity. The two- stage process makes it possible to integrate a melt filter and a degassing unit on the injection unit side of the injection moulding machine.
Left to right: Christoph Steger, CSO, and Stefan Engleder, CEO, speaking at the Engel E-Symposium
the previous year. In contrast, the Americas accounted for 30% (up from 25% in 2019/20) and Asia 23% (20% in previous year) of sales. High spots last year included “significant” growth in Technical Mould- ing sales, and further growth in Medical sales. Steger was positive about 2021 but bottlenecks in its supply chain for raw material materials and components for machine- making has introduced “a degree of uncertainty that makes planning difficult”, he said. Nonetheless, he said: “We haven’t postponed one shipment because of supply chain issues.” Engel CEO Stefan Engleder said: “We have continued to pursue our development goals with undiminished vigour over the past year and a half.” The group’s R&D investment has been maintained at a high level of €70m. Introducing the E-Sympo-
sium, Engleder said a lot of the technology develop- ments and discussions at the event concerned
INJECTION WORLD | July/August 2021
sustainability. He believes the issue of plastics sustain- ability will continue “for years, if not decades”. A new coinjection process was shown at the symposium which enables recycled material to be completely encapsulated in the mould- ing of HDPE pails. Engel developed the process in co-operation with Top Grade Molds (see more on this process in the Packaging feature starting on page 15).
Sustainable process Engel launched another process at the event aiming to facilitate greater use of recycled content in injection moulded products. The two-stage system can process recycled plastic flakes directly in an injection moulding machine, eliminat- ing the usual pelletising stage. Gunther Klammer, Vice-President for Plasticis- ing Systems and Recycling, said the process can save 400 Wh per kg of material by cutting out pelletising. In the first stage, the plastic flakes are melted in a conventional plasticising
As an alternative to an injection screw, the plasticis- ing screw used for creating the melt can be combined with a piston unit. This variant of the two-stage process is also very efficient for processing very large shot weights of up to 160 kg with a comparatively low injection pressure requirement. The trend towards digitally-assisted manufac- turing was highlighted at the event by Engel, which thinks that linking digitalisa- tion to sustainability will bring about energy- and resource-saving benefits. “If we genuinely make use of digitalisation, the CO2 reduction targets set by politicians will suddenly no longer seem impossible,” said Engleder. Engel has smart assis- tance systems, such as iQ weight control and iQ flow control, that prevent rejects and reduce energy con- sumption. The group also discussed its Sim Link solution for linking simula- tion and physical production. To provide a single source for its digital offerings, Engel has set up a Digital Solutions Sales Team which bundles all sales activities for digital solutions from its Inject 4.0 programme. �
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