Despite challenging market conditions, Conair Group, which is now part of the global Piovan Group, turned in an outstanding performance in 2024, thanks in no small part to the efforts of the team on Allegheny Boulevard, here in Franklin.

At the Conair site, some 160 employees work in functions including operations, engineering, manufacturing, assembly, installation, sales and Customer Care. To understand the foundation of Conair’s continued success in 2024, it is important to understand how the company has responded to changing customer needs.

To help them succeed, Conair increased its range of new auxiliary equipment products, strengthened its systems engineering and installation capabilities and expanded its aftermarket training, service and support capabilities. The Conair Franklin team continues to play an integral role in all these efforts. They contributed to historically strong year-over-year growth in market share for Conair products during 2024 and are essential to meeting a bright outlook for bookings and continued growth in 2025.

New Products, Recycling Efforts Mark NPE2024

“Historically, Conair has been known for producing innovative and long-lasting industrial equipment, and our team came through again in
2024,” explains Conair Group President Jason Ganim.

Conair met evolving equipment needs in May 2024 by introducing twelve products at NPE 2024, the world’s largest plastics tradeshow, held in Orlando, Florida.

Many of these new products are built or supported directly by the Conair teams located in Franklin. Topping the list are conveying and drying products that utilize “artificial intelligence” via the new, patented Conveying with Optimizer™ and ResinWorks with Optimizer™. NPE also saw the introduction of a new fully-automated resin selection station, called the AutoRSS, as well as redesigned drying equipment and hoppers. In addition, Conair offered new “mini” versions of blending, temperature control, and conveying control products, followed by a new “smart granulator” control with industry-first predictive maintenance capabilities. Meanwhile, at another area of the NPE show, Conair’s new Smart Granulator Control and a Viper 1736 granulator were key parts of a plastics granulation system that helped achieve the goal of recycling 100% of the plastics created at the NPE 2024 show.

Beyond NPE, Conair developed other new products as well, including its largest-ever “Ultra” plastic shredding system, a machine so large that it requires three semi-truck trailers for shipment.

Big manufacturers use shredders and granulators to recycle manufacturing scrap and increase the sustainability of their operations. Recyclers use this “size reduction” equipment to break down “post-consumer” scrap – plastic bottles, containers, packaging materials and more – so it can be resold to plastics processors for re-use.

In addition to building the new Ultra shredder line, the Conair Franklin team also added assembly operations for large-capacity railcar unloading systems that the company added through a recent acquisition.

A Growing Systems Engineering and Installation Business

Franklin-based employees form the heart of Conair’s fast-growing Systems business, which offers plastics processors fully engineered, professionally installed solutions. These solutions range in size from project-scale jobs — such as new drying or blending systems — that take a day or two to install to major, plant-wide production systems or greenfield facility developments.

Ganim explains that more customers turn to Conair for systems help because equipment is becoming more complex.

As its business grows, the Systems team faces the challenge of larger and more diverse projects. One recent installation, completed for a major U.S.-based manufacturer, was an enormous system requiring over eight miles of large conveying tube.

Compared to typical mechanical contractors, Conair’s employee-led installation teams offer unique knowledge of the plastics business and of the equipment being installed, resulting in optimal system installations and performance. In 2024, to keep pace with growth in the Systems business, Conair began work to hire a fifth employee-led installation team to its roster. They will be needed, since Conair sold its
two largest-ever systems projects in 2024, with both scheduled for installation in 2025.

Rising Demand for Aftermarket Support

Beyond equipment and systems, short-staffed customers are also looking to Conair for help in managing and maintaining their processing equipment for the long haul. In response, Conair expanded its Customer Care team, adding an aftermarket business development manager and augmenting the range of service products supported by Franklin-based staff.

Already, these service products include Machine Health Assessments and annual Service Agreements, both of which attained new sales records in 2024. To these, Conair added a new service called “SureLaunch” for processors who install their own new equipment. This one-day Conair technician visit supports proper installation and configuration of the new equipment and ensures that operating personnel are trained to use it correctly.

Co-op Programs Contribute to Quality Products

The Conair Franklin teams do a lot more than just build products. They also test, package and ship products, and provide product parts, technical support, and service, both remotely and in the field. These teams set an all-time record for Conair products shipped in October 2024.

Of course, before any product ships, it must be tested to validate assembly, performance and safety. Therefore, the quality of the initial build
of a product must be maintained at a high level, or expensive rework — considered “lost” time — is incurred.

Over a two-year period, a team comprised of seven engineering co-ops from the University of Pittsburgh, plus two Conair advisers, developed a new testing rig for Conair’s latest line of resin dryers. With the help of the new testing rig, assembly teams were able to boost initial dryer build quality — expressed as “first time correct” — to a record level in 2024. Engineering co-ops also worked with Conair staff to help develop new predictive maintenance and energy saving features in Conair’s latest line of smart granulator controls.

Two Franklin high school co-ops, Liam Reese and Brady Spencer, are learning how to build electronic panels and controls in Conair’s Panel Shop as part of their Electronics training curriculum at the Venango Technology Center. In addition to their technical training and responsibilities, the students are “required to demonstrate our core values here at Conair, holding them- selves accountable, having an open and positive attitude and supporting the team’s success,” says Panel Shop Super- visor Angelica Myers.

Building Careers, Recognizing Excellence

The loyalty and longevity of Conair Franklin employees reflects the organization’s focus on providing long-term career paths and promoting from within when possible. The company’s 2024 service awards recognized four employees with 50, 45, 30 and 30 years of service, respectively, as well as 17 other employees with either 20 or 10 years of service. Eighteen qualified employees were also internally promoted into open positions, taking advantage of the chance to leverage experience gained in one area of operations, such as assembly, shipping, or finance, into others such as engineering, operations, or service.

Thanks to a Conair benefit that pays every employee for one day of community service each year, the time and talents of Conair employees are felt not only in the plant, but also in the community.

In 2024, Conair and Pio- van Group employees based in Franklin used this bene- fit to provide 352 hours of community service to organizations and causes including UPMC’s Walk for Children’s Hospital, the Venango County Humane Society, Franklin Chamber of
Commerce, and 4-H Club of Venango County.

What is Auxiliary Equipment and Why is it Important?

Most people recognize that plastic parts are created using “primary” production equipment like molding and extrusion machines. However, few outside the industry appreciate the vital contribution that “auxiliary” equipment makes to plastics production and recycling. That contribution is why the work of Conair Franklin employees is so important. Together, they design, engineer, assemble, test, deliver, and support the industry’s widest range of auxiliary equipment, including:

  • Material handling and conveying systems that receive, store, and move plastic pellets and other raw materials to production equipment.
  • Drying systems that remove moisture and pre-heat plastics prior to processing, or that help restore the properties of recycled plastics so that they can be re-used.
  • Blending and feeding systems that precisely measure and custom-mix ingredients used to create plastic products.
  • Temperature control and heat-transfer equipment essential to heating or cooling complex molding and extrusion processes.
  • Shredding and granulating machines that “size reduce” process scrap and post-consumer plastic waste so that both can be recycled and remolded into useful products.

Auxiliary equipment produced at the Franklin plant is essential to the production and recycling of plastics used in thousands of everyday applications: automobiles, aviation and transportation products, appliances, food and beverage containers, construction and building products, consumer goods, lifesaving medical and surgical devices, power tools, retail food and pharmaceutical packages, and many more. It is no exaggeration to say that Conair Franklin facility — the largest Piovan Group manufacturing facility in North America — is one of the most important centers of auxiliary equipment manufacturing in the world. The talents and capabilities of Franklin employees, together with the value of the many products produced and assembled here, are one of the reasons why Conair’s parent company, Piovan Group, ranks as the world’s largest manufacturer and marketer of plastics auxiliary equipment.

Read the full Derrick Article here.