How Vita chose a new flex foam line

How do foamers decide which equipment to buy when they are expanding? Vita Group’s Nick Wood spoke to Simon Robinson about a recent purchase.

The flexible polyurethane foam industry in the north-west of England owes a debt to the founders of cotton-spinning businesses in the 19th century. These entrepreneurs realised the damp conditions, and the ready supply of water, coal and labour, made it the ideal location to build cotton-spinning mills.

When the markets for British-spun cotton evaporated in the 1950s, some of these factories were taken over by flexible foam companies like the Vita Group, which also needed people and space.

There is a challenge, though. The factories were not designed for polyurethane production, and some imagination is required when working out how to fit plant, conveyors and storage at both ends of the process together on these sites.

We need more capacity

Nick Wood, operations director at Vita Group’s Middleton, Manchester facility said his company realised a new production line was going to be required about five or six years ago. ‘We saw a spike in volumes in 2013,’ he said.

‘We researched the market and saw that the bedding industry in the UK was going through a significant transformation from spring- to foam-based mattresses. This wasn’t noticeable for individual bedding retailers, but a 1% swing was significant to the UK’s three major foamers. If we didn’t do something about it we would miss an opportunity.’

Vita had already improved efficiency with the closure of a Kay Metzeler plant in Bollington, Cheshire, 22km (14 mi) south of Manchester, and transferred that business to Middleton.

An area of the plant that housed a cylindrical foam machine was earmarked for change, and that equipment was relocated to a Vita facility in Lithuania.

‘We wanted to address a number of things, primarily capacity and to improve our innovation capability,’ Wood said. ‘We are a material processor, so by being more efficient we can have a significant impact on the financial performance.’

More flexibility

The desire to enhance the plant’s flexibility and also to test out new added-value products initially lead Wood’s team to consider a box foam plant. ‘We knew where we needed to be flexible and that did not call for high volumes,’ he said.

The main attraction was that box foam is a batch process. There is less change-over waste than there is on a continuous line. ‘The box foam option initially seemed to tick a lot of boxes,’ said Wood.

However, after talking to a number of suppliers, he said, it was clear that they had underestimated the amount of waste involved in flushing the box system between lots. ‘When we looked at scrub rates, labour costs and the quality that we would need, we decided to invest in a continuous line,’ he explained.

The main production at Vita’s Middleton site is run on a Hennecke UBT line that was purchased between 1979 and 1980, Wood said, and it produces higher volumes than several of the other group sites. He added that output is used for products manufactured in large quantities that are kept in store until needed.

‘We have added to the UBT line significantly over the years,’ he said. ‘We have the carcass of the UBT line, but the control system and the conveyor have been replaced, for example. It is like a vintage car with the brand-new engine underneath it.’

They visted Germany to look at some of the smaller Hennecke offerings. ‘I liked their JFLEX machinery,’ Wood said. ‘It offered everything I thought we’d need, in a plug-and-play option. A team of Vita technicians manufactured a technically challenging product, and it was right first time.’

Vita initially offered to become a JFLEX development partner, but ultimately took the decision to invest in the Cannon-Viking machine as it offered more benefits across a range of requirements, in particular product range, yield and engineering customisation.

Germany vs Italy

‘Looking at the Cannon-Viking equipment, it was robust,’ said Wood. ‘It has the potential to do a range of products such as CarDio. We also want to use the machine to make expanded graphite loaded products. For us, the German option ticked a few of the boxes, while the box foam option ticked less boxes and the Cannon-Viking ticked the most. We have been able to develop a bespoke piece of kit.’

Cannon Viking, is located in Manchester’s Trafford Park industrial estate, which is about 16 km across town from the Vita site. ‘They understood the constraints of the building,’ Wood said. ‘We had to move walkways, for example. With an off-the-shelf offering, we would never have been able to do that.’

The final decision to buy a Viking Hyflo machine was made in 2014. It was ordered in 2015, and delivered and commissioned in March 2016.

Wood explained that it has a small footprint, and while it is capable of producing bigger volumes at high speed, it can manufacture bespoke, novel, efficient foam. ‘It has high levels of flexibility with the ability to interchange different development additives easily. It has achieved what we needed,’ Wood added.

Currently, the Hyflo line is used for made-to-order lower volume foam products. It will also be a development machine for formulations between leaving the laboratory and finding their way onto the larger line.

In the future, this line will be expected to be a higher volume plant, manufacturing the products it was initially used to develop, Wood said.

Earlier on the day that Urethanes Technology visited the factory, Wood’s team had been carrying out product development work with a potential client on the new Hyflo line.

Vita has since made another significant investment at the site, with the installation of a new curing facility in the second half of 2017. Although this is principally fed by the Cannon-Viking line, according to Wood it can equally be linked directly to the UBT line, thus providing greater flexibility for growth and protection against business interruption.

All about Cannon Viking

Cannon Viking is as old as the polyurethane industry itself. Along with firms such as Hennecke, it traces its roots back to the late 1950s. Commercial manager Jonathan Rayner explained that, in his experience, at production of around 1000 tonne/year many customers switch from boxes to small continuous machines.

Customers can then progress in size through the company’s range up to Maxfoam models from 400, 600 to 800 Maxfoam Trough and Elite Liquid Laydown to the CMax 800 and 1000 models as the volumes grow, he said.

The Cannon subsidiary claims to be the only European slabstock manufacturer offering a complete integrated turnkey solution from tank to block cut off. It also claims to be the only Maxfoam manufacturer which builds its own controls in-house. ‘This allows us the flexibility to develop and modify our products to customer requirements,’ Rayner said.

The company’s machines offer closed-loop control which, Rayner said, ensures chemical metering and machine performance are as accurate as possible.

Its CarDio carbon dioxide and filler technology has been a real growth area for the business over the past five years, Rayner said.

Cannon Viking also claims to be a pioneer in computer control. ‘We have a team of four who write the software for Viking machines,’ Rayner said. ‘This is a unique feature, but it is a standard product for us. We can link directly to customer’s machines if they are having trouble.’

In terms of machinery development, Rayner said: ‘Mechanically, we don’t see a lot of changes. A pump is a pump, but the controls side of the business is really changing.’

The company has been located on the western side of Manchester since its early days. ‘A lot of our Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers are nearby,’ Rayner added. ‘Manchester is an engineering city.’

Manchester for engineering

He said that Cannon Viking buys the pumps, motors and mass flow meters. ‘We assemble and dry-test each new machine here using a tried-and-tested modular design,’ he said.

The 4500m2 site in Trafford Park handles 40 projects/year, including 10-15 new machines, Rayner said. The rest of the work includes upgrading components for customers who cannot stop their machines. ‘We supply new components such as mixing heads or metering lines or controls or flat-top equipment to optimise their machinery,’ he said.

Rayner added that the company has been fortunate to have hadt five years of continuous growth. ‘We are finding that while many customers are looking at refurbishing, a lot of are buying new machines to replace old or are opening up new branches and want to use familiar machinery,’ he said. ‘We find we are supplying hardware and know-how and project management today.’

Like other companies that have been around for some time Cannon Viking, has a long list of clients. Most recently, business has been good in parts of Latin America. The company is working on projects in Peru, Argentina and Mexico. Recently completed projects, in addition to the Vita Group line, include a high-pressure liquid laydown MaxFoam plant for Mentvil in Argentina, where, Rayner said, one machine replaces two existing foaming lines.