Arburg Open House Emphasizes Turnkey Capabilities

Arburg invited customers, vendor partners and trade press to its U.S. headquarters in Rocky Hill, Connecticut, in late September as part of an open house featuring seven exhibits, including running molding cells, as well as its Freeformer additive manufacturing machine, one of its service vehicles and a digital services kiosk.

Martin Baumann, managing director of Arburg Inc., the German company’s U.S. subsidiary, addressed attendees, laying out some of the challenges of the current market, as well as the company’s growing focus and capabilities to help U.S. customers with turnkey projects. Specifically, Rocky Hill is designated as an Arburg Technical Factory (ATF), joining ATFs in the Czech Republic and Pinghu, China, as sites that can customize special order machines and full work cells with customer-specific requirements utilizing local tool and auxiliary equipment suppliers.

Baumann acknowledged that capital investment has been depressed for some time, but that his company is “generally, moderately optimistic” about business moving into 2025, noting that the U.S. remains a very good region for manufacturing. This has been made particularly true by ongoing reshoring of projects that have returned to the states after being shifted overseas. “Reshoring is a big deal,” Baumann told attendees, noting that, “you all have one or two examples of a project coming back.”

In October during the company’s press conference at the Fakuma trade fair in Friedrichshafen, Germany, Arburg executives echoed Baumann’s assessment of market challenges. New Managing Director Steffen Kroner reported that the company generated revenue of €784 million in 2023, with sales tracking below that figure in the current year. “In 2024, there were some sporadic success stories thanks to a number of attractive projects, but the situation in terms of incoming orders remains weak,” Kroner says. At Fakuma, Arburg forecast that consolidated turnover for 2024 would come in at €620 million, which, if that figure held, would be 23% lower than 2023, year over year.

In separate comments, Tobias Baur, newly named managing director sales and after sales at Arburg, noted in his statements that the company saw clear weaknesses in market development in the Americas, including the U.S.

Local-to-Local Strategy

As announced at NPE2024, Arburg is planning to assemble machines outside of its global headquarters in Lossburg, Germany, for the first time. At the open house in Connecticut, Baumann told Plastics Technology that the company had not yet determined where it would establish a new facility for assembly in North America, as it was still assessing potential locations. At Fakuma, Arburg reiterated that a final decision on location has not been made but also noted that the first Allrounder Golden Electric EVO injection molding machines had been assembled at the company’s ATC facility in Pinghu, China, as part of the local-to-local strategy.

Mike Sancoucy, vice president of sales and turnkey systems at Arburg, walked attendees through the company’s work cell capabilities, including examples of recent projects and cost calculators. “What is a turnkey system?” Sansoucy asked rhetorically. “It’s a jigsaw puzzle that starts with the project — that’s the center piece of the puzzle.” He highlighted the company’s collaborations with moldmaker Foboha over the years, noting that the company’s main factory is just 45 minutes from Arburg’s global headquarters in Lossburg, Germany. A Foboha cube mold was in operation at the event molding 2K closures. In U.S., Sansoucy says Arburg has three project managers and six project engineers dedicated to turnkey systems. The company will also create a turnkey system for an existing Arburg press, which is a change from past precedent.

In terms of return on investment, Sansoucy walked through various scenarios, including fully automatic and with varying levels of operator interjection. He did note that difficulties in finding labor have made fully automatic work cells more appealing.

At the event, a 200-ton, two-shot machine combined nylon and LSR in one part, with the machine featuring adapted platens to provide more space and an optimized second injection unit. Working with Control Automation Group (CAG; Warwick, Rhode Island) Arburg created the turnkey cell entirely in the U.S. CAG’s Mike English noted that the cell featured fully integrated Yaskawa and KUKA robots, with the LSR pump and temperature control unit tied to the machine control via OPC UA protocols.

Baumann says that companywide Arburg has more than 375 experts working in work cell space with 1,500 turnkey projects completed in conjunction with than 100 partners. “We see more demand for turnkey solutions where we put the entire system together,” Baumann said. “We have to make the machines smarter, since we do have a skills gap in our industry. There are a lot of people retiring, so we need to insert their knowledge into the HMI.”