Multivac on continued growth course

As part of a press con­fer­ence at Fach­pack, Hans-Joachim Boek­ste­gers, Direc­tor and CEO of Mul­ti­vac, gave an overview of the cur­rent devel­op­ment of the busi­ness, as well as the pack­ag­ing trends at Mul­ti­vac and just some of the com­pa­ny’s many prod­uct inno­va­tions on the exhi­bi­tion stand.

With a turnover of around 1.1 bil­lion euros, the Mul­ti­vac Group was able to achieve in 2018 a growth in turnover of 7.7 per­cent over the pre­vi­ous year. The num­ber of employ­ees increased to 6,400 world­wide. “Despite many eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal uncer­tain­ties, we are expect­ing a slight growth in turnover for the cur­rent busi­ness year,” explained Hans-Joachim Boekstegers.

Investment in the worldwide production network

The con­tin­ued expan­sion of pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty has a high pri­or­i­ty in the future as well. A new Cen­ter of Excel­lence for slicers and automa­tion solu­tions is cur­rent­ly being built at the com­pa­ny’s head­quar­ters in Wolfertschwen­den, and this is due for com­ple­tion in 2020. Its floor space of approx. 17,000 square metres will also cre­ate 180 high-qual­i­ty office work­sta­tions, as well as con­fer­ence and func­tion rooms, which will be capa­ble of being used very flex­i­bly. As regards the Mul­ti­vac sub­sidiary TVI, pro­duc­tion and admin­is­tra­tion facil­i­ties will be con­cen­trat­ed on a green­field site of around 9,000 square metres at the Bruck­mühl site. A new Cen­ter of Excel­lence for meat por­tion­ing machines is also cur­rent­ly being built there, and this will sim­i­lar­ly be put into oper­a­tion in 2020. The high­light of this is an Appli­ca­tion Cen­ter, which is specif­i­cal­ly designed for the needs of cus­tomers. The com­pa­ny is also cur­rent­ly plan­ning to man­u­fac­ture pack­ag­ing machines and periph­er­al com­po­nents in Taicang (Chi­na). In addi­tion to man­u­fac­tur­ing, the facil­i­ty will also have devel­op­ment and design depart­ments. The start of pro­duc­tion is planned for the end of 2019.

From machine manufacturer to supplier of complete solutions

With the takeover of the Fritsch Group in August 2019, Mul­ti­vac is com­ple­ment­ing its range of solu­tions, so that in future it will also be able to offer com­plete pro­duc­tion lines from one source to the bak­ery indus­try as well. Fritsch is a man­u­fac­tur­er of bak­ery equip­ment with its head­quar­ters in the town of Markt Ein­er­sheim in Low­er Fran­co­nia. The prod­uct range con­sists of high-per­for­mance equip­ment and ground­break­ing tech­nol­o­gy for dough form­ing and pro­cess­ing — from table­top units to indus­tri­al-scale sys­tems. “This acqui­si­tion is anoth­er impor­tant step in expand­ing our range of inte­grat­ed solu­tions for pro­cess­ing and pack­ag­ing food prod­ucts,” explained Hans-Joachim Boek­ste­gers. “It is our aspi­ra­tion to always be able to offer our cus­tomers the most effi­cient total solution.”

Sustainability concept

“When it comes to sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing solu­tions, we are the part­ner of choice,” said Hans-Joachim Boek­ste­gers. “We are rais­ing the aware­ness of sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing con­cepts among our cus­tomers world­wide. We are now mul­ti­ply­ing our sus­tain­able con­cepts world­wide, even in those regions, where we have not yet seen an active demand for these solu­tions.” The Mul­ti­vac prod­uct port­fo­lio includes a wide range of sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing con­cepts, which make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to reduc­ing the pack­ag­ing mate­r­i­al used to pro­duce packs. Oth­er con­cepts are based on the use of renew­able raw mate­ri­als or ful­ly recy­clable films such as for exam­ple mono plas­tics, or alter­na­tive­ly paper fibre-based pack­ag­ing materials.

X‑line machine generation

Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion is a fun­da­men­tal com­po­nent for Mul­ti­vac in the devel­op­ment of new prod­ucts, and it is there­fore sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly incor­po­rat­ed into all pack­ag­ing solu­tions. “Now that our RX 4.0 ther­mo­form­ing pack­ag­ing machine has set a new bench­mark in the mar­ket, we have expand­ed our range in the X‑line machine gen­er­a­tion with the addi­tion of anoth­er future-proofed mod­el,” explained Hans-Joachim Boek­ste­gers. “The fea­tures of the new TX 710 tray­seal­er are a robust machine con­cept and an intel­li­gent con­trol sys­tem. These ensure that the max­i­mum out­put, reli­a­bil­i­ty and flex­i­bil­i­ty are achieved.” At Fach­Pack the TX 710 was giv­en the “Ger­man Pack­ag­ing Award” in the pack­ag­ing machine sec­tor by the Ger­man Pack­ag­ing Insti­tute (Deutsches Ver­pack­ungsin­sti­tut e.V.).

New generation of cross web labellers

A new gen­er­a­tion of cross web labellers is also being pre­sent­ed by Mul­ti­vac at the trade fair. In addi­tion to improved per­for­mance and oper­at­ing reli­a­bil­i­ty, one of the fea­tures of the new mod­els com­pared to the pre­vi­ous labelling solu­tions are their low­er life cycle costs. The use of state-of-the-art com­mu­ni­ca­tion stan­dards such as IO-link and Ether­CAT ensures they are equipped for the future. This enables addi­tion­al sen­sor sys­tems for exam­ple to be used, such as those for labelling inspec­tion or pre­dic­tive maintenance.

Full wrap labelling offers a wide range of design options

The trade fair high­lights also include a labelling solu­tion for the D labelling of packs, which is mar­ket­ed under the name “Full wrap labelling”. As with a ban­de­role or sleeve, the label is com­plete­ly wrapped around the pack, and this offers many pos­si­bil­i­ties for dif­fer­ent types of pack design, as well as increas­ing the attrac­tive­ness of the packs at the point of sale.

Management change

After more than 18 years as CEO of the Mul­ti­vac Group, Hans-Joachim Boek­ste­gers will hand over the busi­ness on 1 Jan­u­ary 2020 to his direc­tor col­leagues, Chris­t­ian Trau­mann and Gui­do Spix, and bow out of the com­pa­ny. Hans-Joachim Boek­ste­gers joined the Mul­ti­vac Group as CEO in April 2001 and has since played a deter­min­ing role in dri­ving for­ward the suc­cess­ful devel­op­ment of the com­pa­ny. He was respon­si­ble in par­tic­u­lar for the sys­tem­at­ic expan­sion of the prod­uct port­fo­lio and Mul­ti­vac’s sales and ser­vice net­work. “I would like to give my heart­felt thanks to all rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the media for their great inter­est in Mul­ti­vac and their pro­fes­sion­al and com­pre­hen­sive report­ing,” said Hans-Joachim Boek­ste­gers in summary.