PROMOTIONAL FEATURE
In 2026, Minebea Intec is marking ten years since relocating to its UK head office in Birmingham. Over the last decade, the manufacturer of industrial weighing and inspection technologies has delivered innovative solutions for customers operating across a range of sectors, bringing performance, safety, and efficiency gains to production processes throughout the country. Peter Walker, country manager UK & Ireland, recently told Packaging Scotland about the evolution of the business over the past decade, reflected on milestone moments, and pondered what could lie in store over the next ten years.
Q) What was the background to the Birmingham move and what were the early years like?
A) The industrial weighing division of Sartorius was sold to the MinebeaMitsumi company and, as a result, we needed to move.
We had the choice to go anywhere we wanted. We did a lot of research and found that this location would be excellent for both our customers and our colleagues in Ireland (because it’s next to the airport). We only occupied the ground floor initially.
The early years were quite new for us. We came away from an office of roughly 200 people and into one that had only 20, comprising of the industrial weighing team. We also had to incorporate quite a few new team members at the time.
Birmingham Business Park is next to the NEC. We are a few minutes away from the International Train Station, about five minutes away from the airport, and soon to be just a couple of minutes away from HS2. Our location is easy for customers both north and south to get to.
Q) What are some of the biggest changes you’ve seen over the past ten years?
A) We feel like there’s fewer project staff operating within our customers’ businesses these days. Those who do get involved seem to need more proof of concept and they have less budget, so are a little more careful about what they buy. That’s actually been good for us. Because we’ve got our own showroom, we can bring people in, prove the concept, show them the equipment, and conduct product testing.
By inviting potential customers in, they see that we do provide the whole package. That’s the benefit of being a manufacturer.
Q) What have been some memorable milestones during this period?
A) Just before the time of Covid, we began to assemble some labelling systems here in Birmingham, which allowed us to expand, enabling us to take the upper floor of the building as well.
The business park was quite empty due to the pandemic, so it was a favourable time to be expanding. That was a real milestone and, actually, we did that over the Covid period. We moved offices to the upper floor and converted the lower floor into a workshop space and showroom area.
In the last few years we have been really focused on upgrading a lot of our checkweighers and scales systems to feature new interfaces to meet the more modern demands of the industry. The expanded space has allowed us to have more demonstration and testing areas.
Q) What does Minebea Intec’s UK and Ireland footprint comprise of today?
A) Our head office in Birmingham contains a sales office, conferencing facilities, and of course the showroom and workshop area. This is by far our main location. We’ve got directly employed engineers who work out of here.
We also have a small office in Dublin to represent our Irish customers. We’ve just expanded our team in Dublin to four directly employed engineers, which is quite unique in the industry.
Q) Have customer expectations changed in the last decade?
A) Yes, we think so. They’re looking for more of a partnership now rather than just a piece of equipment. Customers today require a lot more supporting evidence to go with solutions – things like sustainability documentation and proof of accreditations. I think they really want to know that we’re going to be there for the long haul to support them.
As a manufacturing business, we have all the test reports and can provide figures on sustainability and energy usage in our production.
Q) What trends are you currently seeing?
A) There’s a lot of requests for connectivity of machinery. There’s also a lot of challenges for our customers with either recruiting or retaining staff.
That’s worked out well for us in that, as I said earlier, we’ve started to look at changing our interfaces on our machines. The project that we’re currently working on revolves around our Blue HMI, which involves taking something like a checkweigher and completely changing the control system. By doing that, we now have connectivity to all the current and upcoming systems that are out there. We’re also able to increase security as customers can control passwords, control access to equipment, and see an audit trail of who’s used it.
We are expanding this across our entire product range. Because we’ve got a wide portfolio – everything from checkweighing through to weighing vessels outside the factory and scales in the warehouse – we will eventually have the same interface across all of those pieces of equipment. That will make staff training a lot easier. If you have somebody leaving production, someone from pre-production or the warehouse will know how to operate that machinery because it’s a common interface.
Q) What are some of the latest machinery innovations from Minebea Intec?
A) The major one is the interface and the uniformity of interface across all of our ranges. We’ve also upgraded our scales with more modern and robust systems. We are always making additions to the ranges of our X-ray and metal detection systems as well as concentrating on some of the vessel weighing applications that we have.
All of these are linked with potential software packages that either control mixing and recipe systems or record data so that we offer that complete package across the whole production process.
Q) Looking to the future, what are your predictions for the next ten years?
A) I think it’s going to get more interesting and challenging. Our intention is to keep expanding. We’re going to keep ahead of the curve on innovations. Something that works really well for us is that we will continue to technically demonstrate these advantages to customers by using our facilities here rather than just sending out glossy brochures. We like to demonstrate and test with customers’ own products and form the partnership that they’re looking for.
The goal is to become the trusted partner for all of our customers.
Q) Do you have any plans to mark ten years in Birmingham?
A) Yes. It is important that this is seen as ten years in this location because obviously we’ve been in business a lot longer than that. But we will be hosting some customer events to mark those ten years so watch this space!
