Universal Converting Equipment are pleased to announce the appointment of Mike Wilkinson as Sales Executive. Mike has a wealth of experience in the converting industry having worked in senior sales and general management roles for Titan, Atlas, Comexi and Kampf.
Commenting on the appointment, Alan Jones, Managing Director said, “Mike is one of the top salespeople in the industry. His experience and knowledge are second to none. He was responsible for Titan during its rapid growth phase and most recently he has worked for Kampf who are probably the largest worldwide supplier of slitting and rewinding machines. We have ambitious growth plans over the next three years and Mike will help us reach our targets.”
Mike Wilkinson added “When I first visited Universal, I was excited by the potential of their machine range and in particular, their X6 slitter rewinder. I could see the investment that has taken place particularly in the machine and control system design. It was good to see features being incorporated to simplify the operation and maintenance of the machines which others have talked about but Universal Converting Equipment has actually done. Although Universal has always had a reputation for high quality machines its sales effort has been limited. I intend to help Universal grow to be a major worldwide supplier of slitter rewinders.”
Universal Converting Equipment are a fast growing manufacturer of slitter rewinders, rewinding machines, hot melt coating equipment, core cutters and other ancillary systems used in the converting industry. These machines are sold globally. The Universal X6 slitter rewinder is a machine with a compact footprint that has proved particularly successful as a high performance yet cost effective slitting machine for slitting flexible materials. It incorporates automatic knife setting, core alignment, closed loop tension control, additional tension zone through slitting and constant geometry contact rollers to allow high speed operation, minimising changeover time, with consistent high quality output.
In the last two years, Universal Converting Equipment has doubled its turnover. To support this turnover growth, Universal invested in additional manufacturing space, designers and assembly staff (Phase 1). However, Universal found that the business was being held back by the lack of capacity of its sub-contractors to meet their increased demands. In the last 12 months Universal undertook an ambitious plan to install its own machine shop so it could be self-sufficient in machined mechanical parts. This Phase 2 investment plan is now complete following the installation of £1m in CNC controlled machine tools. The investment has included a CNC mill for the manufacture of machine side-frames, a CNC lathe for production of rollers, PC controlled roller balancing equipment and a range of CNC machining centres for the manufacture of other parts. Special foundations were built for some of the equipment. For example, the large mill sits on a solid reinforced concrete base over 1000mm deep. Levelling the machine bed to the tolerances required took a specialist team over a week to achieve.
Lean Flexibles are a fast growing supplier and contract slitter of flexible packaging materials based at Hinckley, UK. Lean offer short lead time supply of a range of materials including PET, OPP, PE, CPP and multi-layer laminates. In choosing the Universal X6 slitting machine, Lean needed a wider web machine which minimised job set up times, produced consistent high quality rolls and was able to run at high speed.
Slitter, winder and hot melt coating equipment manufacturer grows into new premises.
Industrial machinery has a reputation for being noisy and it’s taken for granted that ear protection needs to be worn when working with very large machines, but how often have you walked past a noisy machine only to realise it doesn’t appear to be actually doing anything? The energy consumption of large processing, printing, packaging and converting facilities can be so large that it puts a dent in a company’s bottom line, and by reducing energy consumption companies are not only helping protect the environment they are also protecting their profitability.