Premium Beauty News - You are an important player at a global level for the transformation of aluminium parts intended for the beauty sector, but you are still little known in Europe.

Steven Rusch - Yes, we haven’t positioned ourselves in the market as being directly on the forefront of the stage for the processing of aluminium parts for the perfumery and cosmetic industry. Many of our customers, for example can be found among manufacturers of pumps, of lipstick tubes or of mascara. But that does not mean, of course, that we are not also producing directly for major brands. It is indeed in our strategy to be a privileged and global partner for the supply of anodized parts for the packaging of companies operating in the health and beauty sector.

Premium Beauty News - Because in terms of production capacity, you look more like a heavy weight competitor with your four plants around the world including three in the U.S. and one in China that dates back to three years!

Steven Rusch - Currently, our global anodizing capacity is 1.5 billion components annually; however, in March of this year, our leadership decided that in order to better support our global customers with reduced lead times coupled with increasing demand, we had to expand our anodizing capacity with a new Greenfield project, which will house two brand new anodizing lines and create an additional 250 million units of capacity. In addition to the anodizing capacity expansion, Anomatic has invested in transfer presses, a tooling and die shop as well as assembly equipment. Our global operations now feature more than 60 high speed presses and 23 semi and fully automated assembly machines. The latest Greenfield project will also house our Innovations Center, designed to showcase more than 45 years of anodized components and bring to our customers new technologies such as rapid metal prototyping and laser engraving.

Premium Beauty News - You never fail to highlight what you call the "Anomatic System" which is related to the anodizing process. What do you mean by that?

Steven Rusch - That’s right, our anodizing system or the “Anomatic System” was originally patented in 1967 and is still unique throughout the world to this day. Our concept of a continuous conveyor belt system was designed to constantly move parts throughout solution in order to achieve consistent uniformity in color and finish. Benefits include: Uniform coverage (inside and outside the component), color consistency (lot to lot), repeatability and high speed automation (each machine produces 500,000 pieces/day).

Premium Beauty News - You have also heavily invested in environmental protection.

Steven Rusch - Absolutely! We completed a few months ago a global sustainability plan which had been implemented in 2008 to reduce our energy consumption, while significantly increasing our ability to recycle and reuse all of the materials in our processes. The plant and the equipments were transformed: up to 40% of the water used is recycled and reused, a new closed circuit solvent cleaning technology, implemented in September 2009, demands 92% less carbon based energy as compared to the previous technology to clean the raw aluminium parts before anodization and also enables more than 90% of the oil used in the forming process to be recovered through advanced filtration for direct reuse.

Premium Beauty News - Some ambitions in Europe of course?

Steven Rusch - Yes, of course! We have already set foot there with an office in Paris. This continent is one of the cradles of perfumery and cosmetics in the world and Anomatic has all it takes to meet European needs for metal parts, closures, decoration and finishing.