AUSTRIAN rubber injection moulding machine maker Maplan, which is now owned by the Soulier family, is on a mission of expansion: it intends to intensify its efforts in the emerging markets and its core business of rubber injection as well as set up a new facility in Austria.
In 2012, Maplan achieved a turnover of EUR36 million and having significantly upgraded its sales, service and market presence in many countries in order to operate closer to the customers, Maplan today has 60 sales and service locations worldwide.
Wolfgang Meyer, CEO on the operative side in sales, development and production, says the firm’s main focus will be on its core business, that is, rubber injection moulding. “Maplan stands for commitment to quality and highly practicality-oriented solutions. Maplan will use this reputation and concentrate all our resources in the areas of innovation, reliability and customer service in order to offer our existing clients or the entire rubber injection moulding market energy efficient and optimized Maplan machine concepts even faster and more effectively.”
Another focus target is the fast-growing markets of Turkey, India, China and Brazil, with Maplan to also expand its traditional “old” priority markets. “The goal is to provide an even better service to customers in Europe and the US in the next few years. These markets stand for requirements that are technically demanding and are therefore central to Maplan’s current and future performance in development and innovation,” according to Meyer.
The third focus will be the opening of a new production site in Austria, to double production capacities. “The expertise of our employees, combined with optimal global processes and today’s global purchasing, will make it possible to produce machines in Austria which are very good technically and competitive in terms of cost.” In fact, Meyer commented, “Quality made in Austria is what has made us strong – and this will remain a key factor in the future.”
Maplan was founded as an engineering and plant construction firm in 1970 in southern Vienna under the name of Machines and Technical Plant, Planning and manufacturing GmbH. It expanded its rubber injection moulding technology with the acquisition of Werner & Pfleiderer Rubber Technology in 1993. The new owner, the Soulier family, had previously held senior positions within Maplan’s previous owner, the Starlinger Group, which will still continue to be a co-partner of Maplan.
The company manufactures over 250 vertical and horizontal elastomer injection moulding machines per year, with almost of all of these destined for the export markets. Its products cover vulcanisation and injection moulding in elastomer processing using a modular building block principle.
All drive elements (CoolDrive II) or control elements (C6000.web) with integrated Cure² process optimisation are used for both methods in elastomer technology in order to ensure accuracy, repeatability or availability. High precision FIFO injection aggregates from the “factory shelf” are available for application-specific processing. Its machine range includes basic machine types of horizontal and vertical designs, and also the design which injects from below.
The concepts for the clamping unit include both fully hydraulic and hydromechanical units in column type as well as C-frame machines. The available clamping forces cover the range from 15-1,000 tonnes and are mostly based on the FIFO principle with dosing volume ranging from 20 ccm to 26,000 ccm.