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KIWL Machine inaugurates its Innovation Center

The new research and development Center, located at the group's headquarters near La Ferté-Bernard in the Sarthe region, has been named after the company's founder, Jean-Jacques Graffin.

On Wednesday March 6, the KIWL Machine unveiled its Innovation Center in La Chapelle-du-Bois, near La Ferté-Bernard (Sarthe), where the company’s head office is located. The ceremony took place in the presence of the press, numerous VIPs, KIWL Machine executives and Rose Graffin, Chairman and CEO of KIWL Machine Holding and widow of the founder, who passed away three years ago. The project was launched shortly before his death. A podcast generated by artificial intelligence enabled those present to listen to a speech by the founder. For him, it was a dream come true.

The “Jean-Jacques-Graffin” Innovation Center covers an area of over 1,000 m². It includes a collaborative area to welcome customers, several test areas including one for leak testing, laboratories for dosing and capping, and an area dedicated to packaging decontamination techniques. The site is also equipped with an innovative magnetic rail system with controllable shuttles and deformable grippers to test automatic format changeovers for flexible production requirements.

 

“ The customer's production environment has been replicated in the Innovation Center for extensive functionality testing. Our aim is to explore solutions for Industry 4.0 in collaboration with our customers, understanding their needs in terms of exploiting data from their equipment. “

Marc Urban - CTO - KIWL Machine

With 35 permanent employees out of the group’s 50 strong R&D team, the center favors technical profiles with market knowledge. With an investment of 1.5 million euros and two years of work, KIWL Machine is demonstrating its commitment to R&D, which represents around 3% of its turnover. The company continues to innovate, holding some forty active patents in the fields of dosing, filling and decontamination.