A Year Of Achievement For Atlas Converting Equipment

Titan SR9-DT Dual Turret Rewinder2011 proved to be a very busy year of achievement for the world-leading manufacturer of Atlas & Titan slitter rewinders, with sales and order bookings exceeding the company’s expectations.

A new corporate entity was established in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA early last year to service customers in North & Central America and Mexico. Later in the year, Atlas incorporated a subsidiary company in Shanghai, China and also one in Mumbai, India. These are all located in regions where Atlas & Titan have a considerable customer base, to provide the best possible sales & service support to customers from their own premises, with locally employed personnel.

“Atlas appointed additional Regional Sales Managers last year to cover several strategically important markets,” commented Alan Johnson, Managing Director of Atlas Converting Equipment Ltd. “Additional service engineers were also added to the organisation in 2011 and the company will launch a platform of new service products during the coming year. Agreements were signed appointing several new agents last year to represent the company in various geographical regions worldwide and to provide support in both sales and service activities,” he confirmed.

The company was present at various conferences and exhibitions throughout last year. This included Arabplast in Dubai, Interplastica in Moscow, ICE USA in Florida, where a Titan ER610 compact slitter was demonstrated (and sold), Chinaplas in Guangzhou, China and the ICE Europe exhibition in Munich, Germany in November where the first model in the next generation Titan SR9 Series slitter rewinders was officially launched, unveiled and successfully demonstrated for the first time.

“Launching the first model from the new Titan SR9 multi-machine platform was one of the most important challenges we faced during 2011,” Alan Johnson further commented. “The ICE Europe exhibition in Munich was perfectly timed to introduce the new SR9 Series slitters with live demonstrations of the Dual Turret (DT) rewinder, which performed faultlessly during the 3 day event, running at speeds of up to 900 m/min.,” he confirmed.

A new suite of corporate and product brochures was also introduced at ICE Europe 2011.

Looking to the future, Atlas Converting Equipment Ltd. will launch a new technology platform for the Atlas range of primary & secondary film slitters in web widths from 2.5 to 10 metres. More details on this will be available later this year with the first models being strongly promoted at the Chinaplas 2012 exhibition in Shanghai, in April. More Titan SR9 models will also be launched during 2012.

“This year will see yet another drupa exhibition in Düsseldorf, Germany in May and we will have a strong presence as always at this very important global event with live slitter rewinder demonstrations daily during the exhibition. The company has a very strong order backlog for 2012 and we already have orders placed and confirmed for delivery in 2013 and even in to 2014,” Alan Johnson further explained. “This has led to our decision to increase our manufacturing capability in Bedford, UK around the launch of the new Atlas & Titan products and our strong order book.”

“Looking back over the last 12 - 14 months since we became an independently owned company again, the Board of Directors are very pleased with what has been achieved and with the response we have received from our employees, suppliers and from both our long-established and new customer base to our product strategy and organisation since the MBO”.

“It is our intention to continue investment within the organisation, in human resources and particularly in technology and service. We have already made significant investment in a new 3D CAD engineering design system and towards the end of last year we acquired a new ‘cloud-based’ CRM system to better serve our customer base.”

“Our business is structured to ensure that we strengthen our position as the market leader in slitter rewinder technology, offering a range of products and services geared towards our customers’ requirements and offering differentiation within the market place,” he confirmed.

“The company has been in operation since 1976 and many of our customers have been working with us for a very long time. It is our intention to continue to support these customers for the long term future,” Alan Johnson concluded.

Atlas Converting Equipment Ltd. has a global installed base of approximately 3,500 primary & secondary slitter rewinders in over 80 countries. This includes more than 2,500 Titan and over 1,000 Atlas machines.