Page 33 - Packaging News Magazine Jan-Feb 2019

MEMBER PROFILE BEUMER
Beumer branches out in Australia
The Australian branch of global machinery supplier Beumer International is looking to expand beyond its cement roots and into more diverse areas of business.
Founded and based in Germany, Beumer has been in Australia for a few decades – first supplying direct from Germany, then through local sales representation, and as of 2011, with a fully-owned local subsidiary.
The company is now seeking to broaden its horizons here, says Jan Faust, regional sales manager at Beumer. “At the moment, we are pretty well rooted in the cement industry, and we’re aiming to penetrate industries like agriculture, chemicals, flour and so on.
“We’re looking to get into distribution centres, which are mostly using alternative stretch wrappers and stretch hoods. Different business segments such as pet food packaging are also
a target for us, as well as the food industry in general,” he says.
Beumer’s Australian packaging division mainly focuses on bag fillers, palletisers and stretch hood wrappers, says Faust. “Originally we were focused
“To have local representation here was a big step forward...”
on cement, but our machines are suitable for just about any bag filling industry.
“We have bag filling machines that can fill up to 20kg bags, for cement and dry mix packaging. In terms of palletisers, we have several models available according to capacity, starting from 900 to 5500 bags per hour.
“We also have stretch hood wrappers suitable for any kind of packaging. They don’t care about what’s on the pallet itself – as long as it’s stable, our wrappers will apply the hoods to bags, barrels, bottles, boxes and so on,” he says.
While Beumer is a ubiquitous name in the cement industry, expanding outside it has been challenging, says Faust. “Every cement manufacturer has our machines. We’re making progress with the others, which can be a bit tricky – big organisations such as supermarkets are difficult to get into because they have their own processes. We’re slowly getting there,” he says.
Beumer, a global company, previously supported Australian clients from its base in Germany. This posed a number of problems, including with time zones, says Faust. “To have local representation here was a big step forward and enabled us to form closer relationships with customers,” he says. “This model is working all over the world, where local subsidiaries have better understanding of the
ABOVE: Diversifying: Jan Faust, Beumer.
customers’ needs and environments where they are conducting their business.”
Despite this, Beumer in Germany still performs a vital role for its Australian operations: research, development, and testing.
“All the new designs are tested before release; for example, the latest stretch hood model we released was out in 2014 and that was tested for more than a year,” says Faust.
“We don’t just release machines and say we’ll see what happens – we test extensively first. We don’t release a new model every year; they have
a long life cycle, and we tweak them to make them more efficient and reliable.”
Beumer’s Australian packaging division focuses on bag fillers, palletisers (right) and stretch hood wrappers.
WWW.PACKAGINGNEWS.COM.AU JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2019 033