Molders differ on IML's prospects.

For the past 15 months, Silgan Plastics Corp. in Chesterfield, Mo., has operated six Bekum shuttle machines with Autotec IML equipment in its personal-care bottle plant in Port Clinton, Ohio. One machine was purchased new with IML equipment while the others were retrofitted. "We deal largely with the household-cleaning and personal-care market, and the two major customers that we have want IML as an option," says business director Art Brown. He says Silgan required a nine-month learning curve to find out what the machines could do, tweak its systems, and correct bugs in the IML equipment. "We think we know enough about the system now and are aggressively seeking additional business," Brown says.

Silgan plant manager Ron Hoffer says the higher costs associated with IML's longer cycle times and higher scrap rate are balanced by the elimination of secondary handling, which is typically done off-line in another part of Silgan's plant. Hoffer says that trade-off may make IML competitive in price with post-mold labeling.

Travomatic Corp., a custom processor in Blue Springs, Mo., has been operating its proprietary Travex shuttle machine retrofitted with an Autotec IML system for more than a year. "We are still in the development stages, but we've been running at real production rates during the past two months," says Bob McElhany, v.p. of manufacturing technical development. "We anticipate that the market will demand IML. Some of our customers have requested that we become more active in it. We purchased IML equipment so that we could be more versatile," he says.

Captive Plastics in Piscataway, N.J., recently purchased its first IML system for a new shuttle machine. "It's a competitive situation and one that's consumer driven," says Mark Juhasz, eastern regional manager. Juhasz says much of his developing IML business is coming from customers that are switching from injection-blow or stretch-blow molding processes. The customers are moving to extrusion blow molding due to legislation requiring their products to contain 25% post-consumer reclaim. His customers thus are turning to coextruded bottle structures. "To make IML economically justifiable for us, our customers are willing to increase their order volumes by 10 or 20% and they are willing to pay more for the product because they want us to have that extra dimension," Juhasz says. Captive Plastics' customers are willing to pay directly for the molds, labels, or the label magazines.

Large-volume bottle makers who primarily use wheel equipment also have some interest in shuttle machines with IML. Owens-Brockway Plastics Products in Perrysburg, Ohio, has three or four Bekum shuttle machines with Autotec label-insertion equipment. Owens-Brockway also uses a proprietary IML system on a company designed fixed-platen machine.

RISKY BUSINESS?

Captive Plastics expects to incur a 20% loss in overall productivity with IML. "Part of the economics is that we need longer runs and more demand, but the customer doesn't always want this. That's part of the capital-investment risk that you have to take," Juhasz says.

Some companies that are ready to make the investment in equipment have found their customers somewhat unresponsive to the IML proposition. "We've converted five shuttle machines to accept in-mold labeling, and we are prepared to invest the money in labeling equipment, but the demand isn't there," says Kenneth Janowitz, president of McKechnie Plastics, Philmonth, N. Y. "We have over 80 customers but only a few have expressed any interest."