Tobacco Asia

12 tobaccoasia Issue 1, 2025 January / February Q&A THE TA Q A By Thomas Schmid Andreas Schweiger, Sales Director Micro Laser Technology GmbH, Germany Tobacco Asia (TA): Andreas, MLT is actually sort of a successor company to now defunct Rofin, one of the pioneers of micro laser perforation in a tobacco industry setting. Would that be a correct assessment? Andreas Schweiger (AS): It's a little more complex than that. Actually, the polygon technol- ogy that we are today utilizing in micro laser perforation was originally developed in the 1980s by German company Carl Basel Lasertechnik. Later on, Rofin bought out Carl Basel Lasertech- nik, inheriting that technology. The founders of MLT originally worked for Rofin, but eventually decided to set up their own company. MLT competed against Rofin for about 20 years. When Rofin eventually went out of business, MLT was left standing as pretty much the only company that can provide this sort of technology. TA: So you are saying MLT is the only company globally that supplies micro laser perforating technology to the tobacco industry? AS: Actually, not really. There are competitors. But, we are building very high performance systems that deliver very good perforation quality at really high outputs. TA: The unchallenged market leader, then…? AS: Yes, we are definitely that. Of course, there are some Chinese companies nowadays. They more or less copied our machines, but it took them 20 years to do that; and they simply cannot come even close to reach our systems' perfor- mance level. Just to give you a number… MLT systems are perforating at a speed of 600 to 700 meters [of tipping paper] per minute. The Chinese machines, though they are obviously a lot cheaper, can currently reach a maximum put-through of 300 meters per minute. So when it comes to high output and high quality, we are still unmatched. TA: But usually the Chinese are rather accomplished at back engineering, often even improving on the original technology… AS: That may indeed be true for certain technolo- gies, but there is one specific component in our machines that is difficult to copy, perhaps even impossible; and that's our polygon technology. TA: You've got to explain that. AS: The polygon is a multi-edged wheel inside the machine; 14 edges to be exact. So, it's not round. During perforation tasks this wheel spins extremely fast. There are only two manufacturers For years, German outfit Micro Laser Tech (MLT) has practically been the only "go-to company" when it came to micro laser perforating tasks. The firm at- tained its global reputation for providing reliably func- tioning systems that accomplish precise perforation tasks at consistently high quality and astonishing speeds. When MLT's long-term marketing director Axel Näther left the company at the end of November last year, his colleague Andreas Schweiger assumed the former's position. Schweiger filled in Tobacco Asia why MLT's products and services remain unmatched, giving the few competitors around a tough time.

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