Sumitomo (SHI) Demag Brand Guidelines: Ankerwerk Nürnberg, Wiehe and a 2008 Japanese Takeover

A Nuremberg machine works, a British agent and a German industrial name.

Sumitomo (SHI) Demag is the injection moulding machine business that Japan’s Sumitomo Heavy Industries, shortened to SHI, bought outright in 2008. Its headquarters are at Schwaig, near Nuremberg, and its name joins the Japanese parent’s to a German engineering name.

The company’s milestones begin in 1950, when Ankerwerk Nürnberg started making injection moulding machines. They credit Ankerwerk in 1956 with “the world’s first single-screw injection moulding machine,” a claim repeated in a 2024 history of the British business published by Industrial News. That history says the British agent, Hamilton Machinery Sales, installed one of the first Ankerwerk machines it sold at British Geon in South Wales in 1957. In September 1974, it says, Hamilton combined with Demag AG to form Demag Hamilton, which by then was looking after more than 800 Ankerwerk and Stubbe machines.

The Demag name itself came from elsewhere: it began as a telegram abbreviation for a Ruhr engineering group, the story told in our Demag guide, and it is now used by separate businesses. The plastics line of descent runs through Demag Kunststofftechnik, founded in 1970 according to the company, and Mannesmann Demag Kunststofftechnik, founded in 1979. Controls feature in the record of this period: WikiPETia, the wiki of the trade magazine PETplanet, lists a machine programmed by punched tape in 1971, a first NC controller in 1975 and a version with a monitor in 1979.

Wiehe, Ningbo and the turn to electric drive.

The small machines came from Thuringia. The company lists the acquisition of the small-machine factory at Wiehe under 1991; a 2011 company statement carried by Plastech said the factory was founded in 1950 and had been owned by Demag since 1990. Traditionally, that statement said, Wiehe was known for its small machines, and in 2011 it reported a large order from geobra Brandstätter of 80 Systec machines to make Playmobil toys.

Production also moved abroad before the Japanese deal. The company dates production in China by Demag Ningbo to 1998; WikiPETia describes it as a joint venture that Demag took over completely in 2005, and records production in India from 2001 through L&T Demag. When the sale to SHI went through, Plastech listed sites at Schwaig, Wiehe, Ningbo and Chennai.

Electric drive is where the brand now places itself. The all-electric IntElect was introduced in 2003, and SHI’s own history says it began selling its electric SE-S series in 1998. In 2009 Wiehe became the European centre of competence for electric machines, and by 2011 all-electric machines made up 60 per cent of its production. The company says it stopped making small hydraulic machines in 2018 and turned Wiehe into an all-electric competence centre.

The later milestones follow the same line. The company lists the first jointly and globally produced all-electric machine between Japan and Germany in 2020, its in-house SAM-C robot line in 2021, the PAC-E packaging machine at Drinktec 2022 and delivery of its 80,000th all-electric machine that year. In 2023 it added all-electric machines for the Asian market through the Demag Plastics Group in Ningbo. The website lists IntElect from 500 to 5,000 kN, alongside the El-Exis SP for packaging and the Systec hydraulic series, and organises its markets as automotive, packaging, electronics, medical and consumer goods.

Machines as the message.

Injection moulding machine makers sell equipment that most people never see, so their visual language is built for a trade audience. The machine itself is usually the hero: a long horizontal body photographed side-on in factory light, often in a paint scheme the maker has kept for years. A colour on the guarding can do the work of a logo across a crowded production hall.

The second recurring picture is the open machine. Platens stand apart with a mould half showing, and a robot arm reaches in to lift a part from the tool. Close-ups of screws and barrels show the plasticising end of the process, where granulate becomes melt, and walls of moulded samples turn an abstract capability into objects a visitor can pick up: closures, housings, gears and containers. Where makers serve cleanroom production, the same machines appear inside enclosed, brightly lit cells.

Trade fairs give makers a place to show a machine running: K in Düsseldorf, Fakuma in Friedrichshafen, NPE in the United States and Chinaplas in Asia. Live moulding demonstrations make parts in front of visitors.

Behind the machines sits a quieter layer of typography and naming. Series names, short codes and clamping forces in kilonewtons carry much of the information, and controllers have become design objects in their own right, with screens and panels of their own. Many makers remain family-held or sit within larger groups, so names and marks can outlast changes of ownership, and the history is often part of the pitch.

Mannesmann, KKR, Madison and then SHI.

The business spent its later German years inside larger holdings. It carried the Mannesmann name from 1979, and by 2006 it was part of Mannesmann Plastics Machinery, or MPM, alongside Krauss-Maffei, Netstal and Berstorff. In June 2006 the European Rubber Journal reported that Madison Capital Partners of Chicago had agreed to buy MPM from KKR. Plasteurope reported in March 2007 that the group was being reorganised and that Demag Plastics Group was being separated out. German Wikipedia says the rest of MPM has traded as KraussMaffei since the end of 2007.

SHI’s purchase went through in early 2008. Plastech reported that the German Cartel Office approved the sale on 28 January, that an agreement was signed at the beginning of February and that it took effect on 3 March 2008. Plastemart said SHI bought 100 per cent of the group from MPM Holdings, including Demag Ergotech and the US sales and service company Van Dorn Demag, and that the Demag name would continue. SHI’s own history records the acquisition of 100 per cent in March 2008. Plastech’s report spoke of a common platform of electric, hydraulic and hybrid machines, and said the established Demag brand would live on.

The buyer is much older than the seller’s plastics business. SHI says it began on 20 November 1888 as a machinery production and repair shop for the Besshi Copper Mine, was incorporated as Sumitomo Machinery in 1934 and took its present name after joining with Uraga Heavy Industries in 1969. Its power transmission side is covered in our Sumitomo Drive Technologies guide.

Integration continued for years. In June 2012 Plastech reported that SHI was buying back the Schwaig site, which had been sold to the property company SEGRO under the previous owner. Industrial News says the British company took the Sumitomo (SHI) Demag name in 2012, and WikiPETia says the two US businesses merged under it on 1 January 2014. The company now describes itself as combining “the best of German and Japanese engineering.” For Fakuma 2026 it announced a joint stand with Technotrans in hall B1, with two IntElect machines.

For a design guide, Sumitomo (SHI) Demag shows how a buyer can keep a local name and put its own in front of it, down to the brackets. Compare Demag, the crane and hoist business that still uses the name, and KraussMaffei, its former stablemate. For this guide we use navy, teal and slate with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Sumitomo (SHI) Demag’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.