Rubber & Plastics News report (PR)
Akron, Ohio—Mesnac Co. Ltd. is breaking into a new market via an acquisition and expanding its capabilities in Europe.
The tire machinery supplier acquired Fushun Yikesi New Material Co. Ltd., a Chinese producer of synthetic rubber and resin products, and will expand its Mesnac European Research and Technical Center in Trencin, Slovakia, by 32,000 square feet.
Mesnac said it spent $60 million (€47m) to acquire Fushun, whose product line includes refined petroleum C5 resin, piperylene, dicyclopentadiene and isoprene derivatives.
Fushun operates one facility in Fushun City, China, and produces about 400 kilotonnes of synthetic rubber a year, Mesnac Group CEO Zheng Jiangjia said at the International Tire Exhibition & Conference in Akron.
The acquisition marks Mesnac's entry into the rubber raw materials side of the industry. The firm is one of the world's largest suppliers of tire manufacturing equipment.
“Mesnac wants to be a global equipment supplier,” Jiangjia said. “If we don't know the product or the raw material, it is very difficult to be the top level manufacturer.
“Today more and more customers ask us to provide high precision and high technology equipment to meet their requirements for their new products. It is very good for us if we know the raw material so we can change the design or develop new ideas within equipment manufacturing.”
Jiangjia said Mesnac's customers want it to perform testing of both the equipment and the raw material. The executive believes that future technology and technology demands will make synthetic rubber a more attractive option.
The acquisition puts Mesnac in position to offer customers both equipment and raw materials.
“We're trying to use integration between the material and the equipment,” Hassan said. “Mesnac is trying to provide a complete solution for the customer, to provide equipment, material and best conditions to process this material at the same time.”
MERTC will provide expanded research and development, manufacturing and assembly through its expansion, which the firm said is expected to be complete by the end of 2015.
Mesnac did not disclose investment details, but it said that it likely will reach several million Euros.
“Our main target is to provide research and development projects for the mother company,” said Karol Vanko, general director of MERTC.
“We are building the new facility to provide better research and development quality for our engineers and also to have the chance to test the machines we are developing. Generally speaking, we're going to improve all of our parameters of our European centre,” added Vanko.
Vanko said the centre employs 25, and final employment projections have not been determined yet, but he said the firm is optimistic it eventually will have 50 employees at MERTC.
The focus of the expansion will be on tire building machines, Mesnac said, but MERTC also will have the capability to assemble hydraulic curing presses and other tire production equipment in the Mesnac product range.
“Mesnac is producing about 300 tire building machines per year, which is a huge amount,” Vanko said. “We want to also develop the quality of the machines. We want to be No. 1 in the world, and these projects will help to develop our tire building machines for the future.”