Italian reconditioned machinery specialist Ripress (Nova Milanese; www.ripress.it) is moving into the new machines market by importing subassemblies such as bases and toggles from Ningbo Liguang Machinery (Ningbo, Zhejiang / China; www.cn-liguang.com) and adding electric parts and controls in Italy. By combining low cost Asian manufacturing with Ripress’ experience in machine control, cost savings of 30-40% are claimed to be achieved, compared with using all European parts. The company is initially marketing five models with clamping forces of between 900 and 2,600 kN. It aims to sell 50 machines in the first year.

Italian manufacturers of injection moulding machines have historically dominated the bottom end of the European market for plastics machinery. The tie-up between Ripress and Ningbo Liguang will allow the Italian company to better compete with the cheaper Asian products that are now coming onto the market and follows the example set by HT Italy (Cazzago / Italy; www.htitalyspa.com), a former subsidiary of the Chinese company Haitian Ningbo, which combines parts from Europe and China.