Ice cream cones and economic clouds: Wittmann’s latest at K show
By Karen Hanna
The injection molding machines (IMMs) at Wittmann’s booth when the K show kicks off Wednesday will be producing the kinds of items you’ll probably see exhibited by some of the company’s competitors: Caps, baskets, flying discs.
But at a press conference last week, Wittmann Battenfeld CEO Rainer Weingraber and Wittmann Group President Michael Wittmann discussed not only the dark economic clouds that continue to bedevil the industry, but a sweet spot awaiting visitors to the world’s leading plastics show: Ice cream cones.
“It’s material you can eat. I did it already. I even ate the granulate. ... It’s an ice cream cone. It’s in four cavities, and this is directly made and processed on our machine,” Weingraber said.
While Wittmann has previously had several booths, this year it will occupy just one — demonstrating its integrated offerings all in one place, with more than 40 auxiliaries operating in seven work cells — including one with a SmartPower 350/1670 producing the cones from an edible, patented plant-based material.
In partnership with Wafflerie, a United Arab Emirates company, Wittmann is promoting the cone production as evidence of its commitment to alternative materials, sustainability, versatility, and, according to one of the OEM’s LinkedIn posts, “innovation with a smile — proof that moulding can be both serious business and seriously creative.”
Wittmann said the company’s booth will show off its technologies’ potential to save users time, material, energy and space.
News from the press conference, however, wasn’t all positive, however, as Wittmann and Weingraber provided an overview of the company’s current fiscal picture.
“As of at the end of September ’25, we had to experience a decrease of 10 percent compared to the same period in ’24. Certainly not what we were expecting going into ’25. Going into ’25, we were expecting actually an increase of approximately the same amount — of 10 percent. Now, it turned out actually here to further weaken,” Wittmann said.
He cited a number of issues, including high energy prices, inflation and the U.S. automotive industry’s arduous transition to greener vehicles as complicating factors.
Tariffs in particular have posed challenges.
Wittmann noted that very few companies produce IMMs in the U.S., meaning “we are all in the same situation.”
“That means for the customers in the U.S., a huge price and cost increase, whether this is a machine from Europe, whether it’s a machine from Japan. ... The price, the cost increase is quite significant. You're talking about 50 percent of tariff. But, effectively, because of the 50 percent on steel, aluminum and copper, the effective tariff is higher. ...
"... How much is then ... forwarded to the customers? Certainly it’s impossible to absorb 15 percent, 18 percent, 19 percent tariffs,” Wittmann said.
As a result, processors are holding off on purchases.
Administrative costs related to tariffs are another burden, Weingraber said, and “there’s still a big problem with spare parts also, because the calculation of spare parts, it’s a nightmare.”
For Wittmann, the situation makes forecasting the future difficult.
While he expressed hope that the K show would gin up new orders, he called the overall situation a “question mark.”
“Economists are predicting for Germany an increase next year of the GDP of 1 percent, which would be absolutely positive, but it doesn’t mean that more investments are done at the same time,” he said. “I mean, the GDP is one thing; investment activity is another one. It’s all about confidence in the end, and as long as the world is in this kind of — I would even say the word ‘chaos’ or ‘constant change’ — it is for companies really complicated and difficult to make an investment.”