Hengelo, Netherlands-based Stork Plastics Machinery BV announced at K 2019 that it was reinvesting in North America to support its customers in the packaging market. Three years later, a subsidiary called Stork IMM USA has a headquarters near Philadelphia, stocked with local spare parts and looking for a national sales manager.
"We have a building and a home. There's concrete underneath the business, and we have invested in in-country service with aftersales personnel based in North America to visit and see customers. We don't fly people from Europe anymore," said Benjamin Sutch, managing partner of Chudleigh Sutch UK Ltd., which distributes Stork's range of full-hybrid injection molding machines in North and South America.
The establishment of a U.S. subsidiary brings Stork full circle. The company entered the press building business in 1968 under license from Reed Corp., then a major U.S. machine builder.
Stork later began making machines from its own designs. The company built on experience that went to back to its founding by the Stork family as a machine works in 1868 in Hengelo.
At one time a publicly traded company, Stork became completely private last year with an investor that supports the strategy to expand to the U.S. market.