An open house at Uniloy Milacron srl in Italy marked the first public showing of U.S.-made Cincinnati Milacron extruders outside North America, now that a five-year noncompete agreement with SMS AG has expired.
``It's our first push into markets outside of North America, with U.S.-manufactured extruders going out to the world,'' said Tom Brown, Milacron's general sales and product manager for extruders.
Brown represented extruders at the open house, held Sept. 21-23 at the firm's Uniloy Milacron unit in Magenta, Italy, near Milan.
Previously, Uniloy Milacron's open houses covered blow molding machines and structural foam presses. This year, it added both extrusion and injection molding machines.
Milacron showed two extruders, built at its main U.S. plant in Batavia, Ohio. A TC-55 conical twin-screw machine, with a screw diameter of 55 millimeters, is designed for custom profiles, windows, pipe, fencing, wood-flour, cap-stock coextrusion and other applications. A TP 93-26 with 93mm screws - the company's smallest parallel twin-screw extruder - is used to make pipe, siding, profiles and sheet.
The open house is just the beginning, according to Brown. Milacron has taken its fight to Europe to secure a piece of the homeland of its arch-rival, SMS-owned Cincinnati Extrusion GmbH of Vienna, Austria. Milacron was the longtime owner of the Vienna business, but sold it in 1999 to SMS.
Milacron's plans include exhibiting its extrusion technology at Europlast 2005, set for Nov. 14-18 in Paris, and at Equiplast on those same dates in Barcelona, Spain. Next year, the firm is scheduled to exhibit at Plastindia, Feb. 9-14 in New Delhi, and return to Milan for the Plast '06 show, Feb. 14-18.
Milacron and Dusseldorf, Germany-based SMS, which also manufactures Battenfeld and American Maplan brand extruders, signed a noncompete agreement that kept them from intruding on each other's markets; that pact expired Jan. 1.
Cincinnati Extrusion has opened a U.S. facility in Erlanger, Ky. Brown said Milacron officials are studying where to set up Cincinnati Milacron extrusion facilities outside North America.
Both companies also now will do battle in the fast-growing Asian market.
``To be successful, we will have to have satellite manufacturing facilities around the world,'' Brown said.
