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While it is true that people tighten their belts during tough economic times, they are not likely to discontinue using consumer products like personal care items and beverages, to name a few. Moldmakers wishing to tap into this lucrative market need to offer unique product designs while keeping costs at a minimum.

Two moldmakers—German-based FOBOHA and Rexam Mold Manufacturing (RMM; Buffalo Grove, IL)—offer unique insight into the consumer products market as both mold manufacturers and suppliers. Building molds for this market resulted in both companies developing their own technologies to help them better serve the market and pass along these benefits to their customers.

RMM designs and builds high-cavity injection molds in the home and personal care, caps and closures and medical markets—including molds with interchangeable components—and has supplied the industry with a wide variety of tools, including single-face, stack, unscrewing, multi-material and rotary cube technologies.

Specifically for the consumer products industry, FOBOHA designs flip-top closures in single-and multi-material, deodorant stick components, disposable razor components, oral care products, and unscrewing molds for closures and laundry caps.

According to FOBOHA Sales Engineer, Lisa Mauro, consumer products are all about shelf appeal and function, and moldmakers must respond to this demand with creativity and innovation in order to remain competitive. RMM’s Jeffrey Barhoff, Sales, expands on these sentiments, adding, “With a lumbering economy, it is necessary for moldmakers today to be far more creative in the way we run our businesses, as compared to years past. Today, quality is a given and value for the investment made is essential. Therefore, opportunities present themselves to those who can be creative, innovative and deliver a quality tool on time.”

Market Trends
According to FOBOHA-Germany Marketing Manager Hansjoerg Keusgen, market globalization has resulted in OEMs’ current strategy of launching new products on a global basis. “In order to reduce costs and to guarantee high quality at all locations, the trend is for OEMs to separate the tooling from the injection molding,” Keusgen explains. “This allows them to use one partner on the tooling side and to use various partners on the injection molding side.

“Unique product design is being employed to increase shelf identification of consumer products,” Keusgen continues. “We also see a trend to do more in the mold, rather than downstream, such as decorating, assembly, etc. The operations which are necessary downstream are being incorporated into the molding cells. This reduces handling and labor—which directly reduces cost.”

FOBOHA’s unique stack turning and cube technology produces single- and multi-material products efficiently and has become an industry standard. Photo courtesy of FOBOHA.

RMM’s Barhoff notes that sectors like home and personal care products are extremely competitive on the tooling side. “Today’s consumer is extremely savvy with their purchases focusing on price and value,” Barhoff says. “This has put extreme pressure on the name brand goods—forcing suppliers to be ever-more creative in their marketing and packaging strategies and opening up the door for the ‘off-brand’ suppliers to enjoy positive growth.”

All this activity points to the need for more injection molds, Barhoff continues. “We also have seen many of our customers resurrecting old molds—repairing and replacing components in order to better contain capital costs,” he notes.

Mold Manufacturing Innovations
FOBOHA has developed a number of technologies as a result of their experience in manufacturing molds for the consumer products industry. “Our stack turning and cube technology—a unique technology to produce multi-material products and even single-material products in a very efficient way—has become an industry standard,” Mauro explains. “We also have developed system technology, which allows our customers to implement many downstream operations into the mold. For example, we have applications which implement decorating, metal inserting, and/or in-mold assembly of two plastic components. When you can take cost away from downstream operations which are typically needed to accomplish the same task, while increasing productivity, it is a win-win situation.”

An example of Rexam Mold Manufacturing’s packaging molds. This market has been lucrative for the moldmaker thanks to its use of innovative single-face, stack, unscrewing, multi-material and rotary cube technologies. Photo courtesy of Rexam Mold Manufacturing.

According to Barhoff, innovations RMM has developed to extend the scope of its business include “a combination of cooling technologies where we can use highly conductive materials along with the placement of water lines close to the part surface through fusion bonding. In addition, as the holder of a development license for Ritemps—a revolutionary cooling technology—we have been able to pursue better control over part quality and achieve faster cycle times for our customers.”

Industry Outlook
Not surprisingly, quality and price are the buzzwords for the future. “The global market is all about providing quality products at a competitive price,” FOBOHA’s Mauro points out. “By doing more in the mold—while at the same time increasing productivity—creative tool design can assist the suppliers to maintain their competitive edge in all regions of the world.”

Barhoff of RMM adds, “While the consumer products market continues to ‘self adjust’ in the wake of Wall Street’s woes, we have been continually optimistic in the potential for growth. Certainly over the last several months our quoting backlog has increased—along with our new mold activity.”

FOBOHA’s Keusgen also sees this growth potential. “Since the consumer market trend is all about shelf appeal, you can be sure that the product designs will get wilder and wilder,” he predicts. “This instills a need for creative moldmakers to bring the new packaging ideas to the market!”