Sumitomo (SHI) Demag UK is celebrating 40 years in business. Managing director Nigel Flowers reflects on some of the key milestones and how the injection moulding landscape and market has evolved over these four decades, and invites Barry Taylor, the MD back in 1974 to share his memories of the company during this era of rapid change.
Nigel commented: “Since our foundation in September 1974, the UK & Eire market has changed beyond recognition, both in terms of size and technology. From the beginning, we’ve been at the forefront of addressing production challenges, whether it’s fast cycling or energy consumption. This enduring success can be attributed to our proud heritage, the Group’s timeless values and our people’s unwavering commitment to customers, engineering innovation, product quality and value for money. As we reflect on everything accomplished, I’d like to thank each and every one of our 300 customers spanning the automotive, IT, packaging, electronic, medical and pharmaceutical, building products and leisure industries for sharing the journey to greater efficiency. Here’s to the next 40 years.”
Landmark moments
17th century … timeless values: The roots of all Sumitomo companies are in the Japanese family of Sumitomo, which can be traced back to the 17th Century. Today, the Sumitomo Group maintains the same family traditions and the ‘code of conduct’ values drafted by founder Masatomo Sumitomo in 1630.
1888: Kosakugata (Sumitomo Heavy Industries) founded to maintain and repair machinery for the thriving copper industry.
1950: Responding to high demand for inexpensive, mass-produced plastic products post World War II, Demag Plastics Group (Ankerwerk Nürnberg) manufactures world’s first reciprocating screw injection moulding machine. During this period, manufacturers in all sectors switched from producing metal components using plungers to plastic components.
1956: Anker builds world’s first single-screw injection moulding machine, giving more precise control over the speed of injection and enabling materials to be mixed before injection.
1973: Replacing the use of analogue valves, the company launched the first injection moulding machine employing a digital hydraulic system, resulting in faster set ups and consistent precision and repeatability over periods of time.
1974: Demag Hamilton formed, born out of Hamilton Machinery and Demag. Barry Taylor, MD at this time, describes it as an “era of plastics entrepreneurs, handwritten sales reports and no mobile phones or IT … it was fun!”
Reminiscing, Barry said: “Around 1974, the UK injection machinery market comprised RH Windsor, Bone Cravens, Bipel, Herberts and Hupfield. The total market of British built and imported machines was about 2700! Salesmen for all of these companies produced handwritten reports. If you were lucky, you had a dictaphone and occasionally called the office from a public telephone box. There were no mobile phone, no IT, we drove Cortina’s (no diesel) and had no sat navs, just a battered and trusty map. On the plus side there were far fewer cars on the road, we may have been provided with luncheon vouchers and when we visited a customer you normally saw the company owner. Congratulations on your 40th anniversary … what a superb history.”
1985: Nigel Flowers joins company as a service engineer, climbing the ranks to MD in January 2006.
1990: As pioneers of all-electric injection moulding machines and driven by the emerging sustainability agenda, the team unveils the first SE series, predominantly addressing the need for precision and repeatability in the medical market.
1999: Fast cycling becomes a reality with modular drive technology on hybrid El-Exis S high-speed machine.
2003: Setting a new trend, the company launches an all-electric injection moulding machine IntElect with water-cooled direct drives for all movement axes. This was designed to meet very specific clean room requirements commonplace in the medical sector.
2011: Sumitomo (SHI) Demag exceeds delivery of 100,000 injection moulding machines in the global market and also launches activeLock, activeFlowBalance and activeDymanics.
2012: Rebranded as Sumitomo (SHI) Demag, the UK team is named Polymer Equipment Manufacturer of the Year 2012 at PPMA Awards for its work with Irish-based plastics manufacturer Molex.
2013: With many customers eager to reduce their environmental impact, Sumitomo (SHI) Demag launches new servo drive hydraulic pump (activeServo), reducing energy consumption by 50%.
2014: At Interplas 2014, the packaging market gets world’s first sight of Smart Fast Clamp, cutting the typical cycle time from 5 to 4.5 seconds.
Ready for the future
CEO Dr Tetsuya Okamura commented: “To be part of a traditional company with a strong focus on the future is not only an honour, it also brings great responsibility. To live and to enhance the values that shaped the thinking and acting of whole generations of entrepreneurs is a task that we take on every day with our heads, hearts and minds. It enables us in particular to accompany your clients on the road to success and to help them shape their future, simultaneously realising our claim to quality, which could not be any more ambitious: to exceed expectations as number one in the market. ”
