Win-win collaboration Complex coordination Boosting

Nolato Magazine
June 2011 No 21
Win-win collaboration
Continuous improvements are nothing new
in industry. But a particularly positive situation arises when both
the customer and the
supplier benefit from improvements.
➤ Read more on pages 4 – 5.
Boosting productivity
By systematicly and
automatically monitoring all stoppages in its production
cells, Nolato Gota can
boost productivity and
ensure even better reliability.
➤ Read more on pages 10 – 11.
Complex coordination
In order to be able to
support its customers
with complex projects,
Nolato Medical has
coordinated elements
of its project resources
at a new Technical Design Center.
➤ Read more on pages 12 – 13.
Shape for grip and visibility
Nolato Cerbo has
developed a new packaging for pharmaceuticals and health supplements, designed to
ensure that it is easy to
open and clearly visible in-store.
➤ Read more on the back page.
Nolato Medical is a leading manufac-
➤
Inger Bengtsson, Nolato MediTech
turer of injection-moulded liquid silicone
for use in medical technology applications. This is an area that requires a high
degree of expertise.
➤ Read more on pages 6 – 9.
Anders Ekberg is new
MD of Nolato MediTor
Anders Ekberg took over as Managing Director of Nolato MediTor in January 2011.
Anders joins Nolato MediTor from Nolato
MediTech, where he was Purchasing Manager.
Per-Olof Jansson and Ghanem Jundi are pleased with the expanded facility in Ängelholm.
Expansion for new production in Ängelholm
Nolato Polymer’s premises in Ängelholm have
been expanded by around 2,000 m² during
the first half of 2011, and investments have
been made to meet an increase in demand.
This relates to products including containers
for IKEA’s 365+ range, which were previously
produced in Kristianstad.
These containers are made using two-component injection moulding of the container
and the lid in their own individual injection
moulds. These are then automatically put
together by robot, labelled underneath and
finally packaged in boxes for transportation
direct to IKEA stores.
Peter Holterberg is new
MD of Nolato Gota
Peter Holterberg took over as Managing
Director of Nolato Gota in January 2011.
Peter joins us from Volvo Aero in Trollhättan.
Before that, he held a number of management
positions within the automotive and engineering industries.
Henrik Enoksson is new
MD of Nolato Lövepac
Henrik Enoksson took over as Managing
Director of Nolato Lövepac in January 2011.
Henrik has worked at Nolato for 17 years,
and was responsible for marketing and technology at Nolato Alpha for the last four years.
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Nolato has become an important player within automated high-speed assembly.
A chapter in Nolato’s recent history comes to an end
In summer 2011, Nolato will cease operations
in Kristianstad. The closure marks the end of
an important chapter in Nolato’s recent history. It was through the acquisition of Ericsson’s
plastics factory in Kristianstad in 1997 that
Nolato first entered the mobile phone sector.
At that time – just fourteen years ago –
the Nordic region was the obvious choice of
location for manufacturing high-tech mobile
phones. In a short space of time, Nolato grew
to become an important player within automated high-speed assembly, and many of Ericsson’s innovative handsets were given their
characteristic appearance in Kristianstad.
Today, the situation is different. A high
degree of automation and long product runs
have been replaced by flexibility and demands
for ever faster model changes. The Nordic
region has been replaced by Asia, and Kristianstad by Beijing.
Nolato Telecom identified this trend early
on and followed its customers into Asia. By
remaining sensitive to customers’ needs and
continuously adapting in line with ever-changing market conditions, Nolato has remained
an important player within the mobile phone
segment.
Ericsson’s pioneering
T28S was one of the models
shaped by Nolato in Kristianstad.
The factory is based in rented premises in the Prahova region.
Nolato starts production in Romania
In summer 2011, Nolato Industrial will open a small production unit in
Romania to manufacture products for the hygiene sector. The start-up was
carried out at Nolato’s Hungarian factory, and production will now be
transferred to Romania to increase capacity and be closer to the customer.
Hans Porat, president and CEO of Nolato.
Dear customers, shareholders, employees
and other readers of Nolato Magazine
Welcome to the latest edition of Nolato Magazine, which I trust
will make for informative reading.
A company must have three overall goals:
– To satisfy its customers.
– To satisfy its employees.
– To satisfy its owners.
The Nolato Group’s Top Management consists of just over 20 managers from the companies in Sweden, China, Hungary and the US.
Macroeconomics and awards at the
Top Management Conference in Lund
Nolato’s annual Top Management Conference was held in Lund this
year, with more than 20 attendees from the Nolato companies.
In addition to a review of Group and business area strategies,
macroeconomic issues were also addressed, including a report from
Nordea macro analyst Bengt Roström on Nordea’s latest financial forecasts.
At the conference, Nolato President and CEO Hans Porat presented
the “Best Company 2010” and “Best Improvement 2010” awards to
Lövepac Converting and Nolato Cerbo respectively.
Dan Wong, MD of Lövpac Converting, and Glenn Svedberg,
MD of Nolato Cerbo, receive their awards from Hans Porat.
I believe that much of what we do to meet these goals is reflected in this issue of Nolato Magazine. For example, you can read
about the win-win situation that arises between the customer and
the supplier when employees implement continuous improvements.
You can also find out about the systematic and automatic mapping of production disruption, which aims to boost productivity,
reduce overtime and improve reliability.
And then there’s the specialist technique of liquid silicone injection moulding, an area in which Nolato Medical is a world leader,
with expertise that we are now also transferring to our new company in the US.
You can also read about the new container for pharmaceuticals
and health supplements, which has been designed with a focus on
both our customers’ marketing and ease of use for the consumer.
Not to mention Nolato Medical’s new Technical Design Center, where development and project expertise has been brought
together in order to support our customers in their complex medical technology projects.
Happy reading!
Hans Porat
President and CEO
Nolato Magazine is produced for our customers, shareholders and employees, and anyone
else with an interest in the Group. Editor: Mats Håkanson. Printing: Ljungbergs, Klippan.
Nolato AB, SE-269 04 Torekov • tel +46431 442290
fax +46431 442291 • e-mail [email protected]
website www.nolato.com
3
Christer Peterson (left) and Rolf Ekstedt with the new combi-guard, which represents a win-win situation for both the customer and the supplier.
4
“We want to achieve solutions
that benefit both parties!”
Continual improvements
for mutual benefit
Working with continual improvements is common within industry when it comes to optimising a company’s own production. But
a particularly positive situation arises in a climate of cooperation
where the supplier can benefit by also suggesting improvements to
the customer’s products.
Nolato Gota in Götene, immediately south
of Lake Vänern in Sweden, is a major supplier of plastic components for Husqvarna’s gardening and forestry products, such as clearing
saws and chainsaws. Deliveries include both
individual components and parts consisting
of several assembled components in different
materials.
Win-win situation
Within its SCITT project, Husqvarna has
paved the way for continuously finding winwin situations between the customer and the
supplier, whereby smart and effective solutions can eliminate waste within the production chain.
SCITT stands for Supplier involvement,
Continuous never-ending process, Improvement of the way we work, Task, Team is the
key. In other words, this is a continuous process whereby the supplier works with the customer to influence working methods.
The SCITT project has resulted in outcomes
such as an important combi-guard for Hus­
qvarna’s clearing saws now being made more
cheaply, by simply changing the plastic material without leading to any reduction in quality.
“We are very interested in finding new solutions in terms of materials and production
processes, particularly when this results in a
win-win situation,” says Rolf Ekstedt, Production Engineer at Nolato Gota.
“We’ve therefore gone round Husqvarna’s
assembly plant to see how our products work
in their environment, and this has given us ideas for rationalisation measures.”
The same ultimate objective
As well as changing the material for the combi-guard, the engineers at Nolato Gota have
also provided suggestions for further improvements, resulting in Husqvarna taking delivery
of a single assembled product instead of ten
different components.
“Not only does this save time and operational stages for Husqvarna, they can also
slash the number of item numbers from ten
to one by us coordinating and assembling the
components at the time of manufacturing,”
notes Christer Peterson, a project engineer at
Nolato Gota.
“We can work extremely flexibly and offer
our customers many different types of solutions. But, of course, customers also need to be
able to benefit from our work at their own end
in order for this to become a reality. If nothing
else, our proposals demonstrate that we want
to work to achieve solutions that benefit both
parties.
“Naturally, Husqvarna’s approach to these
issues has increased our interest in working
directly with the customer. After all, we both
have the same ultimate objective: we both
want to make money!”
5
Nolato Medical has many years of experience in silicone rubber injection moulding
Flexible material with unique
properties and possibilities
Nolato Medical is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of
injection-moulded silicone rubber precision components for use
in medical technology contexts. This is an exciting area, featuring
strict demands and continuous development. But it also requires
in-depth experience, a high degree of expertise and special solutions for product verification.
Silicone rubber has a perfect balance of
mechanical and chemical properties, making
it ideal for use in medical applications. The
material is fully accepted by human tissue, is
resistant to UV light, can cope with large differences in temperatures, returns to its origi-
Nolato MediTech’s Dan Jönsson examines a silicone component for an incontinence aid.
nal form after being stretched out or pressed
together, and can be injection-moulded using
complex moulds and very thin walls.
These properties make silicone rubber highly suitable for medical technology products
within areas such as anaesthesia, cardiology,
dialysis, orthopaedics and urology.
“Here at Nolato we have more than thirty
years of advanced experience of working with
silicone rubber,” says Magnus Björk, a mould
specialist at Nolato MediTech in Hörby.
“Right from the start we have helped to develop the processes together with the machinery
manufacturers, and this has given us a particularly firm footing.”
After all, silicone injection moulding

The image to the right shows
seals for pacemakers. These are
injection-moulded in liquid silicone, a field which requires both
experience and expertise.
6
7
During scanning, green indicates the
correct measurement, while yellow/red
indicates +0.01 mm to +0.04 mm and
blue indicates –0.01 mm to –0.04 mm.
The challenges
of measuring
silicone components
Silicone components are soft, and their
shape can therefore be affected by handling. As a result, it is vital that these components are handled properly, and that
they are correctly oriented before measuring.
Arrangements involving fixtures, vacuums, etc. are often needed to ensure that
the component is positioned correctly
before measuring begins. It is also important to ensure that the shape of the component is not affected by it being under
pressure.
Choice of measuring method
The measuring method chosen depends on
factors such as the accuracy required.
Today, scanning is one measuring method that offers excellent opportunities. A
number of different scanning methods are
available. Nolato Medical uses CT, optical and white light interferometers. The
most suitable method depends on size,
complexity and the degree of accuracy
required.
Measuring hundredths of a millimetre
With a white light interferometer, it is possible to measure to within 0.001 mm in
small areas.
The measurement analysis involves
comparing the scanned outcome with the
CAD model. In this way, deviations can be
seen clearly.
8
isn’t something that everyone can do well.
Although the basic principle is the same, the
process is very different to injection-moulding
plastic.
“Not least because it places much higher
demands on the moulds in which the product
is made,” explains Magnus. “When manufacturing plastic components, the raw material
is melted down into a viscous mass, whereas
silicone has a particularly low viscosity when
processed, which makes things more complicated. The silicone mustn’t leak out between
the halves of the mould or be marked by the
edges of the mould when it vulcanises.”
Freer forms bring new opportunities
Silicone’s unique properties also bring great
advantages and make it possible to manufacture products that couldn’t have been produced using other materials.
“Since silicone returns to its original form
after being deformed, we can manufacture
projects with geometric forms that would be
impossible to remove from the mould with a
harder material,” says Jörgen Nilsson, a product developer at Nolato Medical.
In plastic manufacturing, the product needs
to be knocked out of the mould, since the
piece of plastic is relatively rigid in its final
form. But when making silicone products it is
easier to pull almost any shape of component
out of the mould.
“For example, the product can be thicker
further into the mould than at the mould joint
– it really doesn’t matter. We pull the product
out and it returns to its original shape as soon
as it’s out of the mould.”
In practice, however, this isn’t as simple as
it sounds – designing the right method to get
the product out of the mould requires both a
high degree of expertise and a great deal of
experience.
Verification requires special expertise
Once a product has been approved for production, the supplier must be able to demonstrate and document that it also meets the
customer’s requirements in mass production.
Jim Håkansson, Jörgen Nilsson, Magnus Björk and Anders Roth.
This is done through visual checks, precise
measurements and other studies of what has
been produced. This verification can be a little tricky for a silicone product, since it is not
rigid.
“It’s important to validate a measuring method so that it always gives the same
results,” explains Anders Roth, who deals
with quality assurance at Nolato MediTech.
Measuring a cross section is relatively straightforward, whereas measuring the
diameter of an O ring that is just a couple of
millimetres thick, for example, can be considerably more problematic. However, this isn’t
a problem for Nolato Medical’s silicone specialists.
“Over the years, we’ve worked hard to
develop practically applicable methods for
verifying the most complex and hard to measure products, even with minimal tolerances.”
This often involves measuring to an accuracy of hundredths of a millimetre, and in certain extreme cases even thousandths.
The importance of early involvement
Achieving the best production efficiency and
economy is largely about being able to influence the producibility and the functionality of
the individual component together with other
parts of the product from an early stage of the
customer’s product development.
“The earlier we can get involved, the more
likely we are to be able to help customers to
achieve their goals,” says Jim Håkansson, a
project manager at Nolato MediTech. “Being
able to consider the components’ manufacture and assembly early on in terms of design
for production and design for assembly is
extremely important if we are to be able to
optimise the cost of the overall production
process.”
Coating metal with silicone
This isn’t just about adapting individual components – it also involves seeing possibilities
that might not be obvious. For example, coating metal with silicone rubber can avoid the
need for a difficult and costly stage when the
product is subsequently assembled. Similarly,
two-component injection moulding of hard
plastic and soft silicone can be a simple and
cost-effective way of helping to give the product the desired properties.
“Today, we can even print directly onto the
silicone,” says Jim. “This is normally difficult,
as the ink doesn’t adhere to the surface of the
silicone easily.”
Nolato Medical has more than thirty years of experience of liquid silicone injection moulding.
Transferring knowledge and
technology to Nolato Contour
During the spring, the customer offering at
Nolato Contour – the US company within
Nolato Medical that was acquired in summer
2010 – was broadened by transferring knowledge and technology relating to liquid silicone
injection moulding.
Nolato Medical has more than thirty years
of experience of liquid silicone and injection
moulding products for the medical technology industry.
“Significant exports already take place from
Nolato Medical’s unit in Hörby to customers
around the world,” says Mattias Persson, a
business developer at Nolato Medical who is
working on the market integration of Nolato
Contour. “The fact that Nolato Contour is
now starting silicone injection moulding production brings new market opportunities.”
Employees at Nolato Contour have undergone training at Nolato MediTech in Sweden
to learn about the new technology, and during a transition period in the US they will also
receive assistance on-site from experienced
Nolato MediTech employees.
“We’ve built a special class 7 clean room for
silicone injection moulding,” explains Barry
Grant, MD of Nolato Contour. “We’ve also
recruited specialist staff, and are looking forward to growing within this technology.”
9
Focus on unnecessary problems
Improved productivity and
greater job satisfaction
By continuously and automatically monitoring all stoppages in
a production cell, Nolato Gota can focus on eliminating the most
common sources of disruption. The aim is to achieve improved
productivity, higher levels of job satisfaction, reduced overtime
costs and even more reliable deliveries.
Nolato’s production technology is becoming
increasingly complex. Where there was previously just one injection mould, today there is
an entire production cell, where one or more
injection moulds work together with industrial robots and other production equipment
to manufacture complete, assembled, finished
products.
And as the level of complexity increases, so
too do productivity requirements, and production downtime must be kept to an absolute
minimum. Continuous automatic production
Production engineers Per Back and Patrik Nordlund think that monitoring downtime has made things easier.
10
cell monitoring has therefore been introduced
at Nolato Gota, in order to help the operators
and the production engineers to identify and
analyse problems that result in production
stoppages.
“Today, an operator deals with several production cells,” explains production engineer
Per Back, who is responsible for monitoring
downtime. “In the past, we concentrated on
quickly getting production up and running
again after a stoppage, and we didn’t have the
time to carry out a thorough analysis of the
cause of the problem.
“But continuously monitoring problems
means that we now have a full and automatic overview of when the stoppage occurred,
what caused it and when the machine was
restarted. We can also see how often the same
type of error arises, allowing us to concentrate
on the most common problems.”
By analysing these problems, the engineers
can work together with the operators to try to
answer questions such as:
 What caused the problem?
 Why didn’t we notice the cause
sooner?
 What can we do to ensure that
the error doesn’t occur again?
“Typically, we’ve identified and resolved
around five problems per machine over a
three-month period,” continues Per. “OEE – a
lean performance indicator of overall equipment effectiveness – is now consistently over
95 percent between changeovers. For some
machines, this is more than 20 percentage
points higher than before we started monitoring downtime.”
For operators, the new system means that
they get help getting production up and running again more quickly after a stoppage.
When changing shifts, they can also quickly
obtain information about how the machinery
within their area of responsibility was functioning during the previous shift.
“Being able to see the downtime statistics
produced by the system is extremely important, both for operators’ day-to-day work and
for our long-term improvement work,” says
Production Engineer Patrik Nordlund. “We
can gradually eliminate the causes of downtime, meaning that operators avoid the inconvenience of minor problems and are able to
produce the intended volumes during normal
working hours.
“And just as importantly, productivity and
reliability have improved!”
11
Coordinated resources
for complex projects
In order to be able to support its customers with increasingly
complex projects, Nolato Medical has coordinated development and project resources at a new Technical Design Center
in Sweden.
Nolato Medical’s projects are becoming
increasingly extensive. These are no longer as
much about simply manufacturing individual components, but relate increasingly to the
production of complete products, with complex development, injection-moulding in plastic and silicone, extrusion, buying in electronic
components, assembling the company’s own
components and purchased components, decoration, function tests and logistics.
Well-designed solutions
“Our strength lies in developing well-designed
solutions, from both manufacturing and enduser perspectives,” says Strategic Account
Manager Johan Christiansson from Nolato
Medical. “We work in close partnership with
the customer and have straightforward, frank
discussions. The aim is to make it simpler and
more cost-effective for our customers to produce an end-product that meets the customer’s requirements in terms of functionality and
quality.”
One important step in this process involves
bringing together parts of Nolato Medical’s development and project management
resources at the new Technical Design Center.
“This enables us to support our customers
more quickly and more effectively to create
better and more cost-effective producibility
for both entire systems and individual, complex products, right from the concept phase
of major projects,” explains Alf Billgren, Project Manager. “We’re like a spider in the web –
as the customer’s partner we can get involved
from an early stage of their development process, contributing our expertise within materials and product design.”
A single contact person
Alf Billgren and Johan Christiansson, Nolato Medical TDC.
12
The new unit also includes employees with
many years of technical experience from
mobile phone projects. This cross-pollination
of expertise and experience is now proving
particularly useful, as new medical technology
products increasingly contain electronics and
involve considerable assembly.
“Our new Technical Design Center also
makes cooperation easier, as customers only
need a single contact person, even for global
projects – regardless of the production technology, the material or subsequent choices of
production location,” concludes Johan.
By cross-pollinating Nolato’s
specialist medical technology
expertise with its experience
from mobile phone projects,
knowledge about integrating
electronics and plastics has now
been “medicalised”. This will be
used widely in modern medical
products, which contain more
and more electronics.
Electronics expertise is “medicalised”
For almost fifteen years, Nolato has worked to integrate plastics and electronics in
mobile phones. Now this expertise has been “medicalised” so that medical technology customers can also enjoy the benefits.
Martin Arildsson
Nolato has worked within the mobile phone
sector since 1997, and over this period of time
the company has built up in-depth knowledge
of integrating plastic and electronic components in a single project.
Today’s medical technology developments
mean that products within this sector also
increasingly include electronics. These often
take the form of displays, circuit cards and
touch panels, but antenna solutions for communicating wirelessly are also becoming common.
Working with medical technology has
always required special expertise and experience, including as a result of the strict safety
requirements and extensive verification and
documentation.
By cross-pollinating Nolato’s broad medical expertise with its experience from mobile
phone projects, Nolato Medical has now been
able to “medicalise” its electronics expertise
and transfer this to its medical technology
projects.
“We can design the product and the production flow for electronics, buy in electronic components, carry out assembly and finally
test all the functions,” says Martin Arildsson,
an assembly preparation engineer at Nolato
Medical with many years of experience assembling electronic components for the mobile
phone sector.
“Shielding electronics so that they don’t
cause or suffer from interference is another
area in which we have long experience.”
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Stricter screening requirements
with base stations in masts
With the new 4G mobile phone networks, base stations will ideally be located at the top of masts. This
places new demands on shielding the electronics.
Moving the base station up from the foot of
the mast to the top reduces losses within the
signal cable, and the mast takes up less space.
However, this also means that the base station
must be made considerably smaller, and that
all the electronics must fit into a slightly smaller box, with tightly packed circuit boards.
Enhanced shielding and protection
“This places considerably stricter demands
on shielding the electronics than before,” says
Andreas Rask, a business developer at Nolato
Silikonteknik. “Not only to reduce the risk
of interference between different electronic
units, but also to prevent dirt and moisture
from affecting the equipment.”
Nolato Silikonteknik identified the trend
towards using new, smaller base stations. Its
market analyses also showed a clear need for
Simple, cost-effective
decoration of smaller runs
Thanks to Nolato ImageTech, it is now possible to
give smaller runs of products such as mobile phones or
­glucometers a unique design.
Nolato ImageTech is a creative decoration
solution that makes it possible to give smaller runs of products such as mobile phones or
glucometers a unique appearance during production.
For example, logos and images can be
applied for special campaigns, together with
colours and patterns to match a company’s
profiling.
In combination with Nolato’s other deco-
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ration solutions, Nolato ImageTech offers
options that were previously impossible.
Even tactile effects can be created, making
the product pleasing to the touch as well as
to the eye.
To protect the surface against mechanical impact, it is painted with a highly durable
clear-coat, which also further heightens the
effect created by the decoration.
improved gaskets for enhanced shielding and
protection.
New, extruded gasket
“We also saw the need for a product that
offered better performance and was more
cost-effective and easy to assemble than previous gaskets,” continues Andreas. “This
solution is now used in products such as our
new, extruded Compashield gasket, which we
developed in-house.”
This is attached using small hooks, and can
be assembled without the use of adhesives.
“The contact surface between the metal
is filled better, giving better shielding. It also
makes the assembly process simpler and faster
for our customers.”
Can the cars of
the future be made
using forestry
waste and plastic?
Could a mixture of wood fibre
and plastic be a good material
for the cars of the future? This is
a question that Volvo is trying to
find the answer to, together with
system manufacturer Brose and
Nolato Plastteknik.
Car doors include a functional carrier plate,
a module that holds the equipment inside the
door – the window opening mechanism, the
locking mechanism, speakers, cabling, etc. – in
place.
This module is currently injection-moulded by Nolato Plastteknik using a mixture of
polypropylene and glass fibre to achieve the
strength, rigidity and flatness required, while
also keeping weight down.
In a current project, the glass fibre has been
replaced with waste from the forest industry.
By using wood fibre instead of glass fibre, an
additional weight saving of around ten percent can be achieved, while the use of renewable raw materials helps to reduce the car’s
environmental impact.
In order to find out how the new material
performs in practice, practical tests are being
carried out by Volvo Car Corporation during
the year. If these trials go well, the idea is that
the wood fibre mixture could also be used in
other components and applications in the cars
of the future.
Is wood fibre and plastic the future?
The gasket is applied quickly, fully automatically and with the desired density.
Quick, automated technology for gaskets
Applying a gasket with the desired thickness and shape to
a plastic component can be both time-consuming and expensive. Except at Nolato Gota, where it’s quick and easy.
Nolato Gota manufactures many different
plastic products for the automotive industry,
including products where a gasket needs to be
used between different components to ensure
that they fit tightly against each other. Applying these gaskets, which are often irregular in
shape and need to fit into a groove, normally requires time-consuming, costly manual
work.
But at Nolato Gota this is done quickly and
completely automatically using a foam technology that is unique in Scandinavia.
“We use a special injection system in which
molten rubber material is mixed with nitrogen gas,” explains Jan Jacobsson, a production engineer at Nolato Gota in Götene. “It’s
then injected through a nozzle directly onto
the plastic component with a precise thickness
and shape.
“By adjusting the amount of nitrogen gas,
we can control the density to meet the customer’s exact requirements.”
The nozzle is fixed in position, and a robot
moves around the plastic component beneath
the nozzle to ensure that the gasket is applied
in exactly the right place. The timing is directly
adapted according to the cycle time for injection moulding, which means that the robot is
able to fetch the next component as soon as it
is ready.
“Our customers benefit from the fact that
we can take the component straight from the
injection moulding process and apply the gasket without any intermediate handling, storage or costly manual work,” adds Jan.
Per-Ola Håkansson (left) and Jan Jacobsson
are very pleased with the gaskets.
15
The soft triangular shape ensures that the container is easy to open, and its unusual shape makes for excellent in-store visibility.
Soft triangular shape for
improved grip and visibility
Nolato Cerbo has developed a new packaging for pharmaceuticals and food supplements, with an unusual design to ensure
that the packaging is easy to open and is clearly visible in-store.
Nolato Cerbo’s new Cerbo Threasy packaging
combines innovative design with improved
functionality. It is triangular with slightly
rounded corners, enabling users to get a better
grip. Less manual strength is therefore needed in order to hold the container steady when
opening the lid.
“The lid is also triangular, with rounded
edges,” says Anci Petersson, Sales Manager at
Nolato Cerbo. “This helps to ensure that the
user gets a good, comfortable grip.”
Together, the container and the lid form a
packaging that is easy to open, even for those
with reduced hand functionality.
“User tests show that the packaging is generally found to be easily opened and gripped,
and that it is easy to get tablets out of the container,” she adds.
For a long time now, Nolato Cerbo has
planned to develop a packaging with a new
design and improved opening function.
Easy to open and visible in-store
“Another advantage of the triangular design is
that the container’s label can be seen in-store
from different directions,” continues Anci.
“This boosts exposure without the container
taking up any more space on the shelf.”
“The reason why we chose a triangular design
is that feedback from the Swedish Rheumatism Association shows that this shape makes
it easier for users with reduced hand functionality to open the packaging,” explains Dennis Broberg, R&D Manager at Nolato Cerbo.
“But we also wanted to produce a packaging
that differs from the standard packaging on
store shelves.
“For many of our customers, particularly those within the food supplements industry, an unusual design is becoming increasingly important in order to stand out among the
mass of similar products.”
Cerbo Threasy meets the requirements for
pharmaceutical and food supplements packaging. It is made from raw materials that have
been approved for these industries, and that
comply with both EU and FDA regulations for
pharmaceuticals and food, as well as USP 671
for airtightness and UV protection.
The new packaging has been showcased at
several international trade fairs, where it has
attracted attention due to the fact that its novel design differs from the standard range of
plastic containers.
Attracts attention