Bekum marks 60 years with new concept machine

Düsseldorf, Germany — At K 2016, Michael Mehnert had just joined the upper management ranks of Bekum Maschinenfabriken GmbH, an extrusion blow molding technology business started by his father, Gottfried Mehnert, in 1959.

He was 34 at the time and faced a lot of questions about what his leadership would mean for the Berlin-based company, focused on packaging for the food and beverage, consumer goods and pharmaceutical markets.

"There was talk about the shift of generations," Michael Mehnert said. "I said change would come in incremental steps. It may be in design. It may be in software. Of course, we did that and more."

Three years later, Bekum launched and sold a sleek, new machine dubbed the Concept 808 just before the company's 60th anniversary booth celebration.

Nobody is comparing the cladding of this eighth-generation blow molder to a school bus like its predecessors. The Concept 808 makes selective use of the company's eye-catching yellow color at the top and base but has wide polycarbonate windows to show off the inner workings.

The modern exterior houses numerous technical improvements to produce containers from 250 milliliters to 3 liters for consumer packaging, such as laundry detergent, personal care products and automotive lubricants.

First, there's an optional magnetic quick mold-change system that makes it possible to swap out molds and adjust the blow pins in 30 minutes, or about 15 minutes per clamp. This is an important feature for processors that often do production changes, said Gary Carr, vice president of sales for Bekum America.

"A mold change for a machine of this size with a standard quick-change system would probably take two to four hours," Carr said. "This is a really significant development."

The Concept 808 also has a new extruder option — HiPEx36D — that provides a homogenous high melt while reducing energy use by 20 percent.

"The key development here allows us to do a more gentle melt of the polymer over a longer time, and by doing that, you use less torque, which uses less power," Carr said. "It's a great innovation. I think the market will be very interested."

Then, there's the new 24-inch operator panel with a touchscreen — Bekum Control 8.0 — to check throughput values and energy consumption.

"We did a lot with Industry 4.0," Mehnert said. "There are data sensors for temperature, energy usage, air consumption and water cooling. We programmed a new dashboard accessible from every internet browser from your smartphone or tablet or laptop if you give access to it. And, there are time filters, for example, to match cooling water temperature to energy consumption in one diagram to analyze the data over a period of hours or a week."

To spur the circular economy, Bekum officials say the machine's triextrusion technology offers a cost-effective solution for recycling single-origin polyethylene and polypropylene scrap. The post-consumer material can be sandwiched between layers of virgin material, which reduces the cost to manufacture containers.

Bekum exhibited the Concept 808 show machine at K 2019 with a three-layer application for 1 liter HDPE bottles made with post-consumer material in 16 cavities.

"Post-consumer resin is being mandated for a lot of consumer products," Carr said. "Our whole industry is under pressure to be more responsible in handling and managing materials. Three layers is a wonderful solution with an inner layer of virgin and an outer layer that's colored for package aesthetics. There's no need to pigment the whole bottle. It's very prevalent in the personal care market as a way to recycle and have some economies of scale by pigment savings."

The Concept 808 is the same size machine as the one Bekum showed at NPE, and it has the company's patented C-base frame clamp, but the similarities will end there going forward.

"I have a new series in mind, and it will have all these Concept 808 technologies, but it may take two years," Mehnert said. "That's why we say this is a concept machine. It shows where we are going."

In addition to the company's 60th anniversary, Bekum is celebrating the company's 50th year in Traismauer, Austria, and 40th year in Williamston, Mich., where Bekum America had a record year of sales for 2019.

"They are so busy building machines their lead time went up," Mehnert said. "We are seriously planning an expansion of the company to have a big new assembly hall. It's in the late planning stage."

Bekum has installed some 18,000 machines worldwide, and about half of them are still in use, giving it "by far the largest" production of blow molders of any brand, according to the company. Bekum employs 350 globally.