Dear Readers:

In America – or, to be more precise, in the United States – making a professional career or simply being successful is not that easy. But it’s by no means impossible. We’re indeed familiar with the many stories of people who’ve gone from rags to riches in the days gone by. KHS, too, has its own fine tale to tell of success in the USA. Founded as a sales office over 40 years ago with its two production sites, KHS USA is now a major player for the beverage industry when it comes to filling and packaging technology, holding a market share of approximately 35%.

Reason enough for us to focus this issue of our magazine on the land of unlimited oppor­tunity – or rather to take a look behind the scenes, where our customers are pursuing exemplary ideas and using cutting-edge machine technology to do so. And with great success. Take the meteoric development of America’s craft breweries on the market, for instance. Many of them are already relying on our systems to bottle their beverages. One of these systems is our new mic­rofiller, which fully translates all the beneficial options of high-performance technology to the medium capacity range. From page 60 onwards you can find out what’s happening on the markets in the U.S. and how traditional family businesses, such as Yuengling & Son and Lakefront, and the young, self-made men at Oskar Blues, for example, are asserting themselves in the brewing industry – often with great success.

“interpack is the largest packaging trade show in the world. And of course we’ll be there!”

There’s a lot happening on the other side of The Pond, which we’d like to draw your attention to. First and foremost, this again includes a good number of innovations, which KHS will be presenting at this year’s interpack from May 8–14 in Düsseldorf, Germany (beginning on page 16). The spectrum ranges from our new tray shrink packer (page 22), which can do practically anything, through the revolutionary Nature MultiPack™ packaging system, which forms simple multipacks with dots of special adhesive, thus considerably saving on both costs and materials (page 28), to the horizontal conveyor, which conveys lightweight preforms even more quickly, gently, and reliably. The team here at KHS is already looking forward to being able to demonstrate these and many other ideas to you at the trade show. And as always, our systems are intended to specifically give your company the best possible added value – and, in an ideal scenario, the definite edge on your competitors. As at last year’s drinktec, we’d like to continue our dialog with you at interpack 2014. We’d like you to rest assured that, according to our uppermost principle, KHS is First Choice in Technology and Service.

We look forward to meeting you at our trade show booth in Düsseldorf in May!

Warm regards,

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Matthias Niemeyer