Thermoforming

Private equity firm Mason Wells has acquired thermoformed packaging manufacturer Mullinix Packages Inc. from the family of its founder, SPE's 2008 Thermoformer of the Year, George Lueken, who passed away at the age of 82 in June.

London-based thermoforming machinery manufacturer Ridat is seeking market expansion into North America, hoping to partner with sales agents and manufacturers' representatives. Ridat, which designs, manufactures and sells a full range of thermoforming, blister, and skin packaging equipment, as well as roller die-cutter machines, says it is known in Europe for a competitively priced product range, which extends from basic low-cost manual machines through to fully automated multitasking systems and installations.

Using a plant in Janesville, WI as a launching pad, Prent Corp. now manufactures in six other locations, including China, Malaysia, Denmark and Singapore. With sales well above $200 million annually, it may be the world's largest custom thermoformer of rigid plastic packaging for the medical, electronics and consumer markets.

If you have money left in your 2011 T&E budget, I suggest buying tickets now to fly to two first-rate shows and conferences in 2012 for medical designers and processors.

First up is Medical Design & Manufacturing (MD&M) West being held Feb. 13-16 in Anaheim, CA. Owned by the same company that publishes this Web site, MD&M has spawned many regional shows around the USA, but for my money, the Anaheim show remains the most interesting.

Recent prize-winning parts show the significant potential of the thermoforming process for medical component design. New applications feature innovative cost-saving packaging as well as functional parts. The growing success of thermoforming is due in part to adoption of new technology, ranging from tooling concepts to new materials.

The OEM approached customer thermoformer Shepherd with a challenging problem: a medical "walking boot" that was being thermoformed and assembled in China had ongoing quality issues, including the fact that the boot's trimming was inconsistent and often in the wrong place.

Thermoformed plastics are making gains in medical applications.

Privately held Mid Oaks Investments LLC continues its 25-year history of investing in the food packaging industry with its agreement to acquire CM Packaging Group, through D&W Fine Pack LLC, a Mid Oaks portfolio company. This acquisition will move forward D&W Fine Pack's strategy to become a nationwide distributor of disposable containers and other food packaging for away-from-home and at-home foodservice markets.

"Next generation overwrap film" is a new biobased packaging material developed for medical kit packaging and made with a minimum of 40% renewable raw material derived from plants. The new biobased packaging is produced with modified Ingeo PLA from supplier NatureWorks, and co-extruded at Clear Lam's CL Polymers facility. Clear Lam Packaging Inc. is an extruder of flexible films and supplier of thermoformed packaging, flexible films, and rigid roll stock,

A new report from market resource supplier Research and Markets (Dublin, Ireland) offers insight into the company's plastic packaging market analyses from the top 10 plastics packaging consumption countries: United States, China, Japan, India, Germany, United Kingdom, Brazil, France, Italy and Mexico.