Page 31 - Packaging News Magazine Jan-Feb 2019

MEMBERS NEWS
NORD CELEBRATES 10 YEARS IN AUSTRALIA
Nord Drivesystems has marked its 10-year anniversary in Australia, with Martin Broglia, managing director, attributing the company’s success to its support systems and its relationship with its customers.
Based in Victoria, Nord has worked to establish solid and accessible support structures around the country to ensure customer satisfaction over the years, says Broglia. “Our exponential sales growth has us constantly relooking our structures to ensure that we can meet the demand,” he said.
“Over the past four years in particular, we have increased our staff numbers by 25 per cent and have added sales support in Queensland, New South Wales and WA, while our head office is still located in Melbourne.”
Nord has developed, produced and sold drive technology for more than 50 years. Its top sellers in Australia are for the food and beverage, water, and intralogistics markets.
“For the food and beverage industry, our
NSD tupH drive is making its mark as a cheaper alternative to stainless steel and has proven itself over the years. Food contamination is a serious topic and this non-chip, non-flake product adheres perfectly to these stringent standards,” said Broglia.
“For Intralogistics, NORD offers a premium efficiency motor – the IE4 along with decentralised variable speed drives (VSD) ,which have many options fitted and allows customers to save on time and money during installation.
“For the water industry, our inline gearbox is popular due to its robust output bearings to handle axial and radial loads.”
According to Broglia, the company treats its colleagues, customers and partners like family, aiming to be trusted partners rather than just a
supplier. “A lot of our success stems from this.
In Australia, it is about creating flexibility for our staff members thanks to flexible working hours and special leave arrangements when needed – especially for those with young families,” he said.
That flexibility also extends to its customers, says Broglia. “No one customer is the same and we evolve to meet their needs,” he said. “Customers often need solutions that are
not part of our catalogue and we adapt to help solve their problems.”
STARTING YOUNG
APPMA member SMC was a proud sponsor of The Robotics Education & Competition (REC) Foundation and VEX Robotics Australia 2018 Nationals that took place on 1-2 December 2018 at the Melbourne Conference and Exhibition Centre. This event hosted the brightest minds from primary school and
high schools for a massive competition that celebrates STEM education, collaboration, hard work and the dedication of these student-led robotics teams. The teams competed in a series of back to back matches each vying for one of the five spots available to Australia to compete at the VEX World Championships held in Louisville, Kentucky USA, April 2019. SMC was on site, showing how its pneumatic systems work in parallel with the VEX VRC platform.
KRONES SPEEDS UP STRETCH BLOW-MOULDING
Krones has released its new Contiform 3 Speed stretch blow-moulding equipment, capable of producing up to 82,500 PET bottles per hour.
Thanks to the elimination of a pressure pad, the Contiform 3 Speed can produce larger bottles more quickly and with less energy, the company said.
“Whereas with conventional stretch blow- moulding machines a pressure pad in the mould carrier holds the two mould halves together during the stretch blow-moulding process, the Contiform
3 Speed has been designed to ensure both halves are held together simply by means of the upgraded mould carrier locking mechanism,” said Krones.
The machine can handle moulds to produce bottles of up to two litres, compared to 0.7 litres in previous small-cavity blow mould carriers, and can save up to 15 per cent on the quantities of compressed air used by competing machines.
Krones says it has combined the advantages of
a smaller blowing wheel and the machine’s reduced
size with some further kinematic optimisations – and has thus achieved a significant rise in output, namely from 2,500 containers with the Contiform 3 Pro to 2,750 containers per cavity/hour with the new system.
“Given the maximum number of 30 cavities, it can thus produce up to 82,500 PET bottles per hour. In all, the Contiform 3 Speed covers machine sizes from eight to 30 cavities,” said Krones.
The manufacturer has also recently overhauled its existing Contifeed perform roller sorter, making adjustments and changeovers simpler.
WWW.PACKAGINGNEWS.COM.AU JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2019 031