The company produced its fi rst razor blades in 1898 – after 100 years of manufacturing swords and pistols. The “Pall Mall” safety razor was the fi rst of many innovations. According to Carsten Meyer, Project Manager at Wilkinson, “other milestones in the success story were the development in 1962 of the fi rst three-coated blades. This enabled us to start a revolutionary development in blade technology. In 1992 there followed the Protector with its ergonomic design. And in 1994 the fi rst razor for women was launched on the market.” There then followed the Quattro products and Hydro series as well as many other developments, which have become a fi rm part of daily grooming and beauty care.

The cooperation from MULTIVAC was seen as being particularly helpful in this project. Carsten Meyer praises here particularly “the professional project support, the extremely good team and above all a customer-focused attitude to solving problems.” Thomas Wolzenburg, Sales Manager at MULTIVAC, adds: “The Wilkinson project was carried out here in Wolfertschwenden by two project managers with extensive practical experience. While one project manager concentrated on the packaging machine, the other focused on the linking to the automation components. This meant we could be sure that the individual modules were perfectly designed for the R 535 and the requirements in Teplice. In addition to this, staff from our international Service organisation were involved when the machine was put into service, and the local Service Center in the Czech Republic ensured that, together with their German colleagues, the packaging machine was integrated smoothly into the existing line structure.” The assessment of the new packaging solution by all those in Teplice is already very positive, even though the machine has only been in operation for several weeks. The output of 210 razors 94 | PACKS FROM AROUND THE WORLD | WILKINSON SWORD GMBH | UPDATE ´17 4per minute, which was specifi ed in the project objectives, is consistently achieved. Thomas Wolzenburg adds: “The cycle output is however constantly at the limit. This is due to the fact, that in all cases several products are being loaded into a highly complex pack cavity shape. 

This can only be achieved by a high-performance thermoforming packaging machine, which functions absolutely reliably and offers equipment options that guarantee maximum machine availability.” To this are added the special demands, particularly the infeed and positioning of the products, which are extremely challenging but ensure a high level of effi - ciency is achieved throughout the entire packaging procedure. Carsten Meyer also confi rms the signifi cant quality improvements in the unchanged design of the packs: “The visual appearance of the seal area has been optimised. We also now have a signifi cantly more rigid blister, even in the corners of the packs. This is due to the change in the thermoforming process and the use of a sophisticated forming system, the so-called “positive forming process”, together with double “sandwich” preheating.” This ensures the products with their complex shape always fi t precisely into the accurately formed pack. Equally important is the consistently even forming of the thermoformed fi lm, as well as the uniform residual fi lm thickness and a high degree of fi lm transparency. The information and barcodes on the card inserts must be easily legible. A further benefi t of the machine: since the heating for the forming station is open when the machine is still, the fi lm can not heat up in an uncontrolled manner. Stop-and-go operation is therefore possible without problems. The operators are also very keen on the solid R 535 machine, because it is easy and reliable to operate thanks to its user-friendly control terminal with touchscreen.