Netstal says time running out for hydraulic models

The company is likely to begin a phase out its Synergy range of fully-hydraulic high performance moulding machines – first introduced in 1996 and the staple of its machine range ever since - within the next three years as the performance and clamp force range of its newer electric and electric-hybrid models develops, Merki said at the company’s headquarters in Näfels in Switzerland earlier this week.

“Synergy will be phased out in maybe two or two-and-a-half years when we have really filled the gap with the new products we have put in place,” he said.

The final decision to eliminate the Synergy machines from the company’s range will be made on economic grounds, said Merki. Not on the simple economics of its own machine manufacturing, however, but the much more important economics of cost of plastics part production to the customer.

“It is clear to say that the future of the small injection moulding machines will not be in hydraulic driven machines. You can see now that up to 200 tonnes we are going to have just all-electric or hybrid solutions because energy is so much an issue. The consumption of energy with electric solutions is so much lower,” he said.

“Our machines are never cheaper than our competitors. We have to give our customers real hard figures to convince them that at the end of the day they will have an economic benefit from choosing Netstal.”

Merki said Netstal will continue to provide full support and service for all Synergy machine users.

The strides the company is making with its electric technology will be demonstrated at the K show in Dusseldorf in Germany in the autumn, where it will launch new 220 and 280 tonne versions of its Elion machine line.

The Elion machines are designed on all-electric platform. These two new models use electrically-driven clamping units delivering dry cycle times of 1.3 and 1.4s respectively together with a hybrid-electric injection system. Full electric injection is not yet able to deliver the injection speeds required but will be integrated in the future.

The 220 tonne Elion machine is capable of moulding a lightweight closure on a 64-cavity mould on a cycle time of 2.1s, according to the company. This will be demonstrated at K.

Netstal will also preview a new control system at the Dusseldorf fair. The Axos system uses a new patented control panel that combines a full colour display panel with an overlay membrane touch surface to give a fully customisable yet tactile surface.

The system also parts company with its previous control system in allowing the user absolute programming freedom – traditional control technology uses fixed sequences which sometimes limit cycle optimisation.

The system will ultimately replace the current DSP system on all Elion and Evos machines, with the first Axos-equipped machines introduced in the first quarter of 2011. The Axos control system will not be available on the Synergy platform.

As a member of the €742m sales KraussMaffei Group, Netstal has not published individual annual sales figures since 2006 (CHF297m) and is not required to do so under Swiss company law.

While declining to give specific figures on the company’s performance during the financial crisis, Merki said he believed Netstal’s focus on packaging and medical markets meant it was less impacted than many of its competitors in the injection machinery sector.

Even so, he said overall sales for the year to the end of September 2009 were down by around 20% on the 2008 period and employment was cut by around 80 positions to 665 people worldwide. Netstal now accounts for around 17% of the total number of people employed by KraussMaffei Group worldwide.

In the PET sector, however, where the company is the number two supplier of preform systems behind market leader Husky Injection Molding Systems, Merki said the company’s sales have grown through the recession and now make up 26% of its total sales worldwide.

In contrast, he said the optical disc market, which in 2000 accounted for 40% of its sales value and close to 70% of machine shipments, is now effectively dead.

“This market segment has gone - it is no longer part of our story. But we have compensated for the downturn in optical disc machines with our electrical machine range. We entered this business segment at the right time,” said Merki.

While optical disc investments may be a thing of the past for Netstal, the DiscJet machine story is not quite at an end. Merki said the specially-developed optical disc machine has found new applications in manufacturing of optical lenses and it now has around 150 machines running worldwide in such niche production.

Based on performance over the first eight months of this financial year – incoming orders are up by 25% on the 2009 period - Merki predicts the company will “markedly increase its sales” in the 2010 financial period. However, he said recovery to the boom levels of 2007 and 2008 is some years away.