A busy year for OMS and Laader Berg

Two western machinery companies took the opportunity of UTECH Asia to tell us about some of their business successes and a significant milestone in the past year, Simon Robinson reports.

Laader Berg has sold its 502nd machine and was getting good attention for its Multimax flexible foam lines Per Henning Vaagen, ceo, told UTECH-polyurethane.com at UTECH Asia 2016.

“On the way to the show we sold a machine to a large firm in the North of China. It’s been a good show with many customers, and many enquiries, and many potential customers. We expected the first day to be very busy and there was a rush of quality meetings,” he said

Laader Berg is represented in China by OSIC, a chemicals distributor. “They are in “close contact with product development and know the capabilities of the machinery. Their opportunities to meet the customer enables them to feedback to Laader Berg what the customer needs and enables us to make good quality machinery at the price for customers,” Vaagen said.

This combination of a chemicals distributor and machinery company, gives “us the possibility to have a turnkey solution of chemicals and machinery,” said Vaagen.

Riding the wave

Meanwhile, at OMS Eraldo Greco, commercial director said: “We are riding the wave” of machinery for polyurethane-insulated products. Business is good, we’ve had a good year again. We have sold a high-speed lamination line to Celotex in the UK and one to Bauder in Germany. In South Korea we sold two flex-faced panel lines as well as all the downstream automation,” said Impianti OMS .

In the US “business is doing well and we are starting work with the Carlisle Group to supply a high speed lamination line. Our first business attempt in the US was in 2000 with GAF. That facility had a record month in June with over 1.4m m² produced. Over two ten hour shifts five days a week that’s an average line speed of 35m/min,” Greco calculated.

OMS is also working with UNDP and UNEDO to convert machinery to pentane “our solution does not need to pre-blend C5 or blowing agent and it is possible to add an independent metering unit, Greco said.

He is also proud to have sold machines to Dow, which operates 4 component machine in Corregio, Italy, Huntsman at Everberg and Coim has two machines.

OMS has also restructured its sale arrangements with a “new sales agent, PU Consulting, in Stockholm. ICI Pakistan – a systems house making polyether and polyester blends business — is our new distributor in Pakistan. In China, Greco said that OMS has “moved office from Beijing to Shanghai. We already have two senior sales people in Shanghai and two in technical support.”

Meeting point

The exhibition has been a good place to see people from not only China, but also East Africa and the Middle East as well. Among the Laader Berg clients at the event was Herbawi, of Nablus. Laader Berg supplied a Maxfoam 5030 machine to them six months ago, Vaagen said.

This is a special year for Laader Berg, Vaagen said: “We have sold our 500th foam machine. This was to a family owned firm in Africa. We have sold in 87 countries, and we support customers in those countries.” This can be done remotely from Norway and with local agents”, he added.

“Laader Berg is completely focused on the sector, anchored in family ownership of the company and its network of representatives,” Vaagen said.

The firm’s Multimax machines “have been received well.” Like other Laader Berg machines, this uses a low-pressure system for liquid lay down or into a trough. Vaagen added that there’s also the possibility to use high-pressure, allowing the right method to be used to make the foam that the customer needs, said Vaagen.

“We believe that this is the most cost-effective method of producing comfort foam, using low-pressure system and trough for standard and HR foams. These have a good density distribution between the bottom and the top of the block. The block also needs minimal trimming and that increases yields,” he said.

“We have tripled our sales from the 2008 – 2009 crisis in all the styles, and market share has grown,” Vaagen said.