On September 23, HRSflow officially opened its new manufacturing facility in Byron Center, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Nearly 200 guests, mostly companies in the plastics supply chain and suppliers to North American automakers, attended the ceremony. There were presentations, demonstrations and tours of the manufacturing plant. Speakers-except Maurizio Bazzo, president and CEO of INglass S.p.A-included representatives of business and industry associations, such as Bill Carteaux, president of SPE plastic engineering company, Betherl/Connecticut, and Flavio Volpe, president of APMA, Automotive Components Manufacturers Association, Ontario/ Canada. A topic of great interest was the live demonstration of the new technology developed by HRSflow, the FLEXflow, a servo-controlled filling system. This solution allows for improved aesthetic quality of stamped components and a reduction in press tonnage and component weight, especially with large components used in the automotive industry for interior and exterior applications.

With its plant in Byron Center, HRSflow now has a production facility on the American continent as well. With a usable area of about 3700 square meters, the site has areas dedicated to the production and assembly of hot runner systems, a goods warehouse, a quality control room, offices, and several other areas. INglass S.p.A., the parent company of the Group, has invested more than 15 million euros in this project, for real estate, buildings and machinery.

"We built the new plant in a record time of only 10 months. We succeeded because we had already thoroughly experienced the kind of infrastructure on other occasions, not only at our headquarters in San Polo di Piave, but also at our Chinese production plant in Hangzhou, near Shanghai," Maurizio Bazzo said during the inauguration ceremony.
He continued: "in all our production sites we have the same machinery and equipment, and all the planning, construction and production processes of our hot runner systems are identical. This enables us to guarantee our customers the same high quality and absolute product reliability on all three continents. At the same time, we manage to be extremely flexible: if there is a slowdown in production capacity at one of the plants, we can easily clear the backlog of orders at one of the other two locations."

In the future, the Byron Center plant will primarily serve the U.S. and Canadian markets, as well as Central and South America. HRSflow has already been present in these countries for years with sales and service facilities.

HRSflow has had a presence in the United States and Canada with sales, service and engineering offices since 2001.

"We realized, however, that only with local production facilities could we achieve short response and delivery times, and flexibility, elements needed, for example, in the automotive industry. We are convinced that with the new manufacturing facility in the center of the North American automotive industry, our business throughout the Americas will expand significantly. Our new production site is therefore a key milestone in HRSflow's continued growth," said Maurizio Bazzo.

Plans are already on the table to expand the Byron Center plant by adding an additional 4,300 square meters. According to Bazzo, this expansion could take place within the next three to four years, and the number of employees would then more than double from the current 50.