Wilmington Machinery Inc. brought its Lumina Pallateer manufacturing cell to NA2010 in Cleveland, marking the first time the equipment firm has exhibited at a materials-handling show, said President Russ LaBelle.
The fully automatic Pallateer can produce structural foam molded pallets from recycled plastic. The material does not have to be repelletized, LaBelle said. The extruder and the injection unit are set on a 90-degree angle, so the cell uses less space.
Wilmington introduced the Pallateer at NPE2009. “We have more proposals, honest proposals, that anything we've ever produced,” LaBelle said at the company's booth. Recyclers and companies that use lots of recycled products are looking at the machine.
The Pallateer has generated a tremendous amount of interest” in South America, mostly from agricultural products customers. “They're the kind of people that make their own crates and they want to make their own pallets as well,” he said.
Since NPE, the Wilmington, N.C.-based firm has added two new models — one that accepts two mold cavities and turns out 60 pallets an hour; one with four cavities that makes 120 pallets an hour.
In other news, Wilmington has hired Andreas Lehnhofer as operations director and product manager for injection molding machinery.
Lehnhofer has worked at KraussMaffei Corp. and Battenfeld of America Inc. He started at Wilmington Machinery on March 5.
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