Rapid Granulator captures significant orders at K’2001

Rapid Granulator AB, the leading global supplier of granulator solutions for plastics recycling, recorded a 50 percent increase in machine orders taken at K’2001, compared with the previous exhibition in 1998, which had established a sales record for the company.

While the largest share of new business came from western European companies, principally Germany, orders were also placed by buyers from Eastern Europe, as well as by North American firms with operations in Russia.

According to Johan Magnusson, Sales and Marketing Director, Rapid Group: “The number of new orders was well above our expectations and the quality of enquiries surprised us with a third involving quotations on specific installations.”

High on the order list was the Rapid Transport Recovery and Air Cleaning System (TRACS). The TRACS system complements Rapid’s medium and large granulators, by removing very fine particulates (25μ diameter) from the atmosphere in the operating environment.

“This delivers major advantages in the workplace,” says Magnusson. “It eliminates airborne dust which substantially reduces the risk of health issues, it reduces wear and tear on equipment due to dust build-up, and eliminates the risk of regrind degradation through discolouration caused by particulates.

Although orders spanned the range of Rapid granulators, the new Rapid 10 series attracted a high level of buying interest.

Designed specifically for the grinding of low volume hard thick-walled, or brittle, injection moulded sprues and rejects, the three models in the series deliver powerful cutting action at low, 25 rpm speed.

“The ability of these granulators to undertake tough regrinding tasks brought considerable interest,” Magnusson explains. “Especially because their small footprint enables installation alongside moulding machines and because the high quality granulate they generate means that regrind can be fed directly back into the injection process.”

Rapid’s commitment to technical innovation in the pursuit of solutions to meet customer needs was further demonstrated by an order confirmation received during K 2001, the largest at the event. The order concluded many months of product development to meet a customer challenge for a granulator solution capable of handling PE 100 pipes of 1000mm diameter in six-meter lengths.

The only option currently available in the marketplace is a one-step process involving high energy costs, generating high noise levels and entailing significant stress on equipment with attendant high maintenance and part replacement costs.

“Based on the customer’s specific granulating needs we developed a solution which eliminated the disadvantages of the alternative process and delivered a superior result,” says Markus Schwarz, Technical Manager, Rapid Germany. “Key to achieving this was finding a partner who could bring substantial technical expertise in shredding and feeding systems to an engineering collaboration. Customer satisfaction with the tailored design resulted in order confirmation and the custom-build granulator will be completed and delivered in May 2002.”

Working at the leading edge of technology, Rapid also provided a window on the future at K’2001 with the presentation of its Concept Granulator. Stimulating great interest the Concept Granulator incorporated a host of revolutionary features, for which patents are pending, offering new customer benefits that range from faster material change-over potential to lower energy consumption and increased ground material output, consequently delivering enhanced cost/performance operations.

Says Johan Magnusson: “The tremendous success we had at K 2001 and the industry’s expressed support for the developmental course we are taking, will continue to drive Rapid’s search for even more innovative granulating solutions for customers.”

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