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Industrial Design & Manufacturing

PARMALAT Promo Fridges

Looking back after two decades across design, engineering and technology, PARMALAT is interesting to me for reasons that have very little to do with the product itself.

Category :

Industrial Design & Manufacturing

Client :

Parmalat

Year :

2010-2015/2017/2019

Company :

Sterling Products, Australia

- Industrial Designer/Design Engineer

PARMALAT promotional refrigerator and production development

DESIGN → ENGINEERING → MANUFACTURING Capability becomes valuable when it can be repeated.

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01 / CHALLENGING THE STATUS QUO

Pushing design and manufacturing capabilities to the next level.

PARMALAT became a test of how far an established manufacturing business could extend its capability when design, engineering and production were treated as one connected system. The project introduced unfamiliar processes, including 3D CNC machining, and required the team to move beyond established methods through applied research, iteration and practical problem-solving.

I initiated the concept and carried it from CAD proposal and feasibility through client approval, process development, cross-department coordination and production documentation. The value extended beyond a single product: it established repeatable knowledge, expanded the company's manufacturing offer and gave the workshop confidence to take on work it had not attempted before.

OPPORTUNITYFrame the challengeDEFINECAD and feasibilityPLANCost, process and rolesDEVELOPResearch, trials and iterationCOORDINATEProduction and procurementTRANSFERDocumentation and standards

Concept Development & Manufacturing Resolution

The project moved through several design directions before the final promotional refrigerator was resolved for production.

Finished product
Concept exploration
Rough assembly and proposal development
Manufacturing problem-solving

Together, these records show the progression from proposal through practical manufacture, including the points where the design had to respond to real workshop constraints.

02 / BUILDING THE PROCESS

From a one-off experiment to a repeatable manufacturing method.

I had spent time across graphics, vinyl, thermoforming and CNC production, learning the machinery and processes rather than treating manufacturing as something downstream from design.

The flatbed CNC was predominantly used for 2D cutting through EnRoute and DXF files. With SolidWorks and SolidCAM being introduced, I saw an opportunity to push the same machine into 3D machining and produce our own thermoforming moulds.

That meant developing the process ourselves: tooling, feeds and speeds, roughing, finishing and, critically, knowing when to stop machining.

03 / PROCESS IN MOTION

Machining the mould and developing the repeatable cut.

Machine precisionRepeatable geometry

+

Human judgementEfficient finishing

=

Production capabilityBetter total outcome

01Tooling

Choose cutters and strategies for the material and mould geometry.

02Feeds + speeds

Balance surface quality, machine load and production time.

03Rough + finish

Remove material efficiently, then preserve only the precision that matters.

04Handover point

Define when skilled manual finishing becomes the better production decision.

3D MOULD MACHININGFlatbed CNC cutting the thermoforming mould.

PROCESS IN MOTIONFrom programmed toolpath to a repeatable cut.

Documenting the Method

The work continued beyond proving that the machine could do it. I translated the setup into a concise internal guide so the process could be reproduced with less trial and error.

The manual records the SolidCAM toolpath setup, machining sequence and key controls, turning an individual breakthrough into shared workshop knowledge.

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04 / THE LESSON THAT STAYED

Innovation does not always begin with acquiring something new.

The technology, equipment and expertise may already be sitting inside the business. The harder part is understanding the system deeply enough to recognise what it could do that nobody is asking it to do yet.

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