New chairman selected for processing & packaging entity.

The Director- Corporate Market Development at Stemmer Imaging, Mark Williamson, has been elected as the next Chairman of the PPMA (Processing & Packaging Machinery Association). He has also been elected to serve on the Board of VDMA Machine Vision for the next three years.

Mark Williamson

The PPMA is the Britain's trade association for suppliers of processing and packaging machinery to world markets and represents over 400 member and associate companies. VDMA Machine Vision is a subgroup within the VDMA Robotics + Automation Association in Germany, with over 100 member companies supplying machine vision components and systems for both manufacturing and non-manufacturing applications across Europe.

Williamson is a former Chairman of the UKIVA (UK Industrial Vision Association) and joined the PPMA Board in 2010 when the UKIVA became a special interest group of the PPMA and continues to be an active member of the UKIVA committee. He becomes Vice-Chair to current PPMA Chairman, Grant Jamieson, from December 2015 and will take up his 2-year appointment as Chairman in December 2016. In 2018 he will revert to the position of Vice-Chair for a further year to support the then incoming Chairman.

Williamson commented: “It is a great honour to be invited to take up two such important roles in the industry. Having served for 12 years as UKIVA Chairman and been part of the PPMA Board for 5 years I have seen a significant growth in the adoption of vision technology in the processing and packaging industry. I look forward to further developing the interests of the processing and packaging sector as a whole during my tenure as Chairman.”

“As one of three non-German members on the new Board of VDMA Machine Vision, I also look forward, together with my colleagues from Belgium and Italy, to bringing a pan-European perspective to VDMA Machine Vision,” he continued. “With individual trade associations playing an important role in representing local vision companies' interests, our aim is to further broaden understanding of the market opportunities across different countries.”

Industry awards finalists announced!

The judging for the PPMA Group Industry Awards has now been completed and the finalists announced.

To attend the awards ceremony

Tom Fisher on +44 (0)20 8773 8111 

or tom.fisher@ppma.co.uk.

Mr Dave Atkinson, UK Head of Manufacturing from Lloyds SME Banking and headline sponsor said “The bank has made a serious commitment to supporting UK manufacturing in recent years and our partnership with the PPMA further demonstrates our support and understanding of manufacturing business.”

The gala dinner event will take place on the first night of the PPMA show on Tuesday September 30th at the National Motorcycle Museum adjacent to the NEC in Birmingham. Everyone is welcome whether a member of the PPMA or not, from suppliers to end users. The event will be hosted by TV comedian and impressionist Rory Bremner and ITV presenter Helen Fospero.

Gary Wyles from Festo also commented “we are also very pleased to be associated with the awards and promoting the value of apprenticeships within our industry with the current skills shortage”

Sponsors of the event include; Lloyds Bank, Festo, Linx Printing Technologies, Omron, PPMA Group Insurance, Stemmer Imaging, Tekpak and tna.

The awards will take place alongside the PPMA Show. The show will be opened by Michael Portillo and includes high profile speakers such as Tesco, M&S, Coca Cola and the Groceries Code Adjudicator – explaining how she is policing the food sector manufacturing supply chain and outlawing some of the current practices. The exhibition is being attended by over 8,000 visitors and hosts 320 exhibitors.

New man at process & packaging body!

The PPMA Group has appointed Andrew Stark as Chief Operating Officer. Andrew has a strong sales and marketing background and has spent the last nine years in the processing and packaging industry working for Multivac in several different marketing, retail account and sales roles.

Prior to this, Andrew worked in IT and outsourced professional services in London’s Docklands.

Andrew Stark

“We are very pleased that Andrew Stark has accepted the PPMA Group board’s offer to become Chief Operating Officer,” states PPMA Group Chairman, Richard Little. “Andrew has many years experience of the packaging machinery market, including in-depth knowledge of end users and the supply chain. Andrew will add value to the already excellent PPMA team and allow us to build on our rapid progress in developing our PPMA Show and related events, and also facilitate the introduction of new strategic initiatives such as the PPMA BEST (Business, Education, Skills and Training) programme.”

Commenting on his appointment, Andrew Stark says: “I am delighted to be joining the PPMA Group at this exciting time to lead our experienced Executive Team in Wallington. This is a milestone year for the Association as we bring the PPMA Show back in house again and take on the challenge of setting up our new educational charity, BEST.  I am very much looking forward to working with all the PPMA team and the Board of Directors, and to meeting many of our members throughout the rest of the year.”

British robot sales much improved in half year to date.

Despite slower sales of robots in quarter one compared to an outstanding record year last year, robot sales for quarter two of 2013 have accelerated and almost matched the level for the entire year of 2011. David Manby, Managing Director of Aylesbury Automation commented ‘we are pleased to see that the sales of non-automotive sector robots are double what they were in 2009’.

In the first quarter of 2013, robot sales of 374 units were recorded compared to 912 in the second. The half year figures were 1286 robots sold compared with a phenomenal 2000 robots in the record year of 2012. However, automotive and automotive component orders contributed 79% of the orders compared with 87% for the first two quarters of the year in 2012. Whilst in most other sectors robot sales are increasing, the growth still remains much more conservative and in some sectors even declining.

Mike Wilson, British Automation and Robot Association Chairman said "whilst we welcome the level of robot orders from the automotive sector largely driven by product demand in global emerging markets, it is an on-going concern that some sectors are still not understanding the potential implications of not automating. Other countries such as China, Germany and most of the major European manufacturing nations, even countries that are not original equipment manufacturers, are investing heavily in automation to create competitive advantage.
“Part of the problem in the UK is a short term approach and the perception that the pay back period is considerably longer than it often is”.

Automating British manufacturing:
The government’s recent drive to automate British manufacturing under the automating manufacturing programme is nearing completion. According to Grant Collier, Head of Marketing for the PPMA Group of Associations, managing the programme "this has been a tremendous success with over 360 manufacturers around the UK taking up the Government funded Automating Manufacturing Programme which shows manufacturers how they can benefit from automation. Applications to date have come from a wide range of industries, including over one third from the food sector which is surprising since this has traditionally been an area very slow to adopt automation". He added, “it is frustrating to hear time and again, that many of the food sector companies are reluctant to automate due to the shortness of contracts and the ability to withdraw them with little notice from the major supermarkets. Hopefully this will improve with the recent appointment of the groceries code of conduct adjudicator – a regulator that will monitor relationships and practices within the grocery supply chain”.

Vision technology in food slicing!

Stemmer Imaging wins Partnership Award 2012 From PPMA

Stemmer Imaging has won the prestigious Partnership Award 2012 from the Processing and Packaging Machinery Association (PPMA) for the provision of vision technology for use in food slicing machines manufactured by Marel. Marel is a leading global provider of advanced equipment, systems and services to the fish, meat and poultry industries.

Stemmer Imaging has been a provider of vision technology for the Marel range of slicing products developed in Norwich (GB) for around 14 years. Vision specialists from Stemmer Imaging have worked closely with experts from Marel to develop a system that would enable a wider range of larger products to be processed with greater accuracy. Key facets of the projects have been the selection of the most appropriate cameras and the development of a suitable image processing methodology using Stemmer Imaging’s versatile Common Vision Blox machine vision toolkit.

Mark Williamson, Director of Corporate Development at Stemmer Imaging, said: “Receiving this accolade rewards the really close levels of co-operation we have had with Marel who are one of our strategic OEM partners. We have worked to help them develop a flexible, patented solution that has been adopted on a range of commercially available high speed, high volume, continuous feed slicer products. The system measures the area, lean/fat ratio and the lean/fat structure and takes into account their different densities before adjusting the thickness of the next slice and providing grading information to labelling technology down the line. By delivering the vision subsystem pre-configured and tested, we are also removing Marel’s need for post design engineering inherent when using fast changing PC based technology.”

Peter Jongen, R&D Engineering Manager at Marel, said: “Our partnership with Stemmer Imaging in vision technology has strengthened our competitiveness and enabled us to bring a new grading technology to our customers”.

The Judging Panel commented: “STEMMER was the clear favourite for this award for its outstanding partnership with Marel in a highly competitive sector of the industry. We particularly commend STEMMER for refusing to rest on its laurels and for continuing to develop new technologies.”

Stemmer Imaging also achieved ‘highly commended’ status in the Customer Service Award category – another of the PPMA Group Industry Awards.

Most innovative machine vision project!

An award for the Most Innovative Machine Vision Project 2012 has been won by Olmec. The award, which is part of the Processing & Packaging Machinery Association Group Awards recognised Olmec’s development of a vision system for the final inspection of ear drop dispensers prior to packaging at Thornton & Ross.

Thornton & Ross Ltd is the largest independent OTC (Over the counter - drugs) manufacturer in Britain and develops, manufactures and supplies a growing portfolio of healthcare products. In 2011, the company commissioned a new packaging line for a range of ear drop products. At a late stage in development the original inspection system built into the line system was found to not be capable of inspecting the droppers to ensure that they were intact before packaging. Olmec was asked to provide a means of solving the application without impacting the existing footprint or layout of the process.

Olmec’s Technical Director, Robert Pounder said: “We are thrilled that our expertise in our field has been recognised through this award. As vision systems integrators, many customers come to us with difficult engineering challenges. However, this project was particularly satisfying as we were constrained by the position in the process that the images could be acquired and we had to link our twin linescan camera solution into an existing reject mechanism. The project involved a combination of skills including vision technology, mechanical engineering, software and control system interfacing.”

Andrew Felstead, Project Engineering Manager at Thornton & Ross Ltd, said: “Thornton & Ross made a significant investment in step change technology which relies upon guaranteed product quality. The importance of vision in this process was recognised at an early stage, but when the OEM vision system failed to meet our original scope, we were faced with a potential disaster. The complete system was so far advanced we had to retain its overall design and that placed severe demands on Olmec. It required a highly innovative approach to devise a vision system that could make all of the required measurements at the required speed within the physical restrictions of the existing system.”

The Judging Panel commented: “Olmec’s solution stood out as a prime example of a vision system designed for a specific purpose, successfully achieving its goals. The system was all the more impressive as Olmec were appointed late in the process.”

Packaging awards

The judging for the PPMA Group Industry Awards has now been completed and the finalists announced.  Steve Gee Managing Director Manufacturing Division of Close Brothers Asset Finance Ltd, Lead sponsor of the event said  “we are delighted to be associated with the awards particularly with such strong interest from the industry in terms of the number of entries that have been received, there has been a healthy representation of companies in every category ” 

Gary Wyles Managing Director from Festo added “we welcome the return of the PPMA Awards and are pleased to see that the awards are open to everyone within the industry which gives a greater representation of excellence”. 

The gala dinner event will take place on the first night of the PPMA show on September 25th at the National Motorcycle Museum adjacent to the NEC in Birmingham (GB). Everyone is welcome whether a member of the PPMA or not from Suppliers to end users. The event will be hosted by Comedian Bobby Davro and Skye and BBC presenter Amy Garcia.

The Finalists in Each category are as follows:

Most Innovative Processing or Packaging Machine 

• Endoline Machinery

• Ishida Europe

• Linx Printing

• SB Plastics Machinery

• Tekpak

• T Freemantle

Processing and Packaging Machinery Manufacturer of the Year

• Easypack

• Makro

• Matcon

• Pacepacker  Services

• PFM Packaging Machinery

Most Innovative Machine Vision Project:

• Olmec

• RNA Automation

• Stemmer Imaging

Most Innovative Automation System:

• UPM Conveyors

• Summit Systems

• Tekpak

• T Freemantle

Polymer Equipment Manufacturer of the Year:

• Motan-Colortronic

• Premier Moulding Machinery

• Sumitomo (SHI) Demag

• TH Plastics

Exporter of the Year:

• Endoline Machinery

• Industrial Washing Machines

• Lock Inspection Systems

• Matcon

• Pacepacker Services

• Russel-Finex

Exceptional Sales Growth Award:

• ABB Robotics

• Conveyor Systems (CSL)

• Fortress Technology

• Matcon

• Mettler-Toledo Safeline

• Proplast Group

• Winkworth Group

Partnership Award:

• Endoline Machinery/Sealed Air 

• Findel Education/Packsize

• Matcon/Lock Inspection Systems

• Motan-Colortronic/CRC -Evans

• Stemmer Imaging/Marel

• TNA Packaging Solutions/ Mettler-Toledo Safeline

Excellence in Customer Service:

• Conveyor Systems (CSL)

• Easypack

• Logopak

• Pacepacker Services

• Stemmer Imaging

The PPMA Group Industry Awards are organised by The PPMA Group of Associations comprising:

PPMA - Processing and Packaging machinery Association

BARA – British Automation and Robot Association

PMMDA – Polymer Machinery Manufacturers and Distributors Association

UKIVA – UK Industrial Vision Association