Sumitomo Demag continues US expansion

Sumitomo (SHI) Demag Plastics Machinery North America Inc. has opened facilities in the Chicago area and Anaheim, Calif., in phase two of the injection press manufacturer's 2019 U.S. expansion plan.

The company announced the news Nov. 4.

A new 15,300-square-foot facility and technology center in Buffalo Grove, Ill., expands Sumitomo Demag's presence and customer support capabilities in the Midwest. The operation includes a training room, offices for sales, service and processing support, plus a large tech center measuring more than 8,000 square feet.

"We're very excited about expanding into the Chicago area," said John Martich ,executive vice president and chief operating officer of Sumitomo Demag's U.S. operations.

The location is within driving distance of molders in the key Midwestern region of Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan and Minnesota. It's 20 minutes from O'Hare International Airport.

"The tech center offers a wide range of opportunities for customers and provides additional support for collaboration with our partners and their customers," Martich said.

The Buffalo Grove tech center is equipped with SEEV-A and SEEV-AHD all-electric molding machines and auxiliary equipment. The facility will be used for machine demonstrations, mold tests and hands-on training and will support other processing and application support and development activities.

Machine training classes will begin at the facility in the first quarter of 2020. Company officials are planning an open house.

On the West Coast, Sumitomo Demag has partnered with QTM Inc., a thermoplastics distributor in Anaheim, to open a new training and demonstration area. The facility includes a meeting room, offices and demo center equipped with an SE100EV-A all-electric machine and auxiliary equipment.

"We're very pleased to have this new facility at QTM in California, enabling material and machine demos for our customers as well as hands-on machine training," Martich said.

West Coast customers also can use the facility for applications development without the need to travel across the country, he added. The Anaheim center is 37 miles from Los Angeles International Airport and 16 miles from John Wayne Airport in Orange County.

Phase one of the U.S. expansion came earlier this year, when Sumitomo Demag moved into a 74,500-square-foot facility in Suwanee, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta. That is nearly three times the size of the company's prior building, in Norcross, Ga.

The Georgia site houses corporate sales, field service and after sales support, plus training. A larger tech center has all-electric presses, and the machinery maker can stock machines and do modifications on new machines, Martich said.

Sumitomo Demag continues to run an operation in Strongsville, Ohio, near Cleveland, that supports the fleet of existing machines and does rebuilding.

Martich said the regional facilities play an important ongoing role in demonstrating new and improved technologies as they develop.

"Our industry tends to rely on a major trade show once every three years to bring together the wide range of advancements in new and complex applications and/or large machine cells — the types of demos that just aren't economically feasible to take to regional trade shows. We believe that molders shouldn't have to wait three years to see what's new," he said.