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Injection molding: LEGO Group wins Arburg’s Energy Efficiency Award
By Matt Defosse
Published: March 23rd, 2011
Everyone knows the toys they make, but few realize the lengths LEGO has gone to
reduce its energy use. The company has increased its energy efficiency by 35% in
the past three years, and is well on the way to slashing the energy used in
injection molding by 45%. Challenged to help it realize these improvements has
been injection molding machine manufacturer Arburg, which kicked off its annual
Technology Days open house with the presentation of this year’s Energy
Efficiency Award.
Bali Padda, executive VP, global supply chain management at LEGO, accepted the
award for the toy maker. “A family-owned business can look at long term issues,
and sustainability can become a central aspect of the company,” he said,
contrasting his employer with ones which he categorized as being too focused on
hitting quarterly financial targets. That doesn’t mean Lego is not in the
business of making money; Padda insisted that sustainable plastics processing
and manufacturing, in terms of energy use reduction and reduction of materials
and waste, is the surest way of helping the bottom line.
“A lot of companies claim to be innovative, but LEGO Group really pushes it to
the limit,” added Helmut Heinson, Arburg’s managing director for sales, who
helped present the award. Heinson and his colleagues openly admit that LEGO is
one of their more demanding customers but added that, in the long term, these
are the type of processors from which the machine maker can most learn. The
relationship between the two companies is indeed lengthy; Arburg’s MD for
technology, Herbert Kraibühler, can look back on almost 40 years of cooperation
with LEGO.
LEGO and Arburg claim they have optimized energy efficiency on a molding cell in
isolation so that a reduction in energy consumption of 45% was realized, said
Padda. Now the brand owner wants to transfer those savings across all of its
molding machines. “We recognized that we couldn’t hit our sustainability targets
by ourselves; we knew we needed to work with our partners” such as Arburg, said
Padda. Arburg expects about 4000 processors to attend the Technology Days event
this week, at which it will introduce its newest electric injection molding
machine, the Edrive (more on that to come).
LEGO molds more than 31 billion part per year, about 1000 every second, in more
than 3000 different shapes and in 58 colors. By 2015 the company has as its goal
to source 50% of its energy from renewable sources, and 100% by 2020. Energy
reduction goals through 2015 are 5%/yr, said Padda.
Platicstoday.com
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