Marangoni Tread North America has completed the expansion and upgrade of its tread rubber manufacturing plant that has doubled production capacity.
“Now, about 75 percent of our North American demand can be manufactured domestically,” says Bill Sweatman, president of Madison, Tenn.-based MTNA. “In the last 14 months, we have added six new dealer plants to our network here in the U.S., and this latest expansion should go a long way to improve our responsiveness to all of our customer needs.”
The most advanced Ring production technology is based on a “modular” or “production island” called the Alpha Ring Evolution. “This represents the state of the art in production design,” says Vito Magistrale, Maragoni’s technical director. “A continuous strip of rubber is automatically loaded onto a moving carriage, fitted with a cold-feed, pin barrel extruder with calendar head. Lenticular strips are fed directly into the centripetal presses where the Ringtread is molded.”
Characteristics of the Marangoni Alpha Ring process, according to the company, include improved uniformity [time, temperature, pressure] over the conventional flat molding process; highly automated; totally integrated; and environmentally friendly.
Adding manufacturing in the United States and expanding the business represents a $10 million investment by the Marangoni Group and is part of a longer-term global development and expansion plan that includes expansion of products, programs and manufacturing.
