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COMPANY PROFILE
Italmatic – Italian for Tyre Equipment
Italmatic’s new offices at Cassina da Pecchi
One of the best known brands in the tyre retreading business is Italy’s Milan-based Italmatic Group. Italmatic is a family business, first established in 1966, that operates in a global market. Its headquarters on the main road into Cassina de’ Pecchi are unprepossessing, a grey building set back a little from the road fronted by a steel fence. However, the facade of this 1960’s building hides the reality of Italmatic, the modern, growing global supplier of everything that the retreading and indeed the tyre sector needs, from puncture repair materials to tread presses, from valves to autoclaves. Italmatic is a company that has continued developing and growing through difficult times. Massimo Ghitturi, managing director, explained, “Our company had been built on a foundation in the rubber industry, presses, autoclaves, moulds, materials and so on. When times became difficult we looked at how we could maintain our business and we diversified. So, today when one looks at Italmatic one can see the retread
supply sector as before, but also an involvement in supplying the composites and glass markets with autoclaves and rubberising of cylinders for the print sector, and of course in the manufacture of equipment for solid tyre production as well as our own Superelastic solid tyre manufacture, plus of course presses and moulds for precure tread manufacture. We have also developed our own software and hardware division. Thus, Italmatic has built a range of diversified interests, each in strong industries, and each with an overlap with each other. In this way we have built a Group that has withstood the pressures of the economy”.
Massimo Ghitturi highlighted that some 7,500 Italmatic machines for the retreading market only have been sold worldwide and that most of them are still operational. This breadth of market experience has allowed the company to develop an excellent and international technical support system second to none.
The focus though for Retreading Business is of course the retread supply element of Italmatic and where the company is going in the current market. “The rubber market has seen a considerable recovery in recent months and that has stimulated demand for retreaded tyres; there is now a great deal of interest in retreading, even from new sectors such as the OTR market,” explained Massimo. “We recently bought OTR equipment manufacturer MGT, so we accessed their OTR technology, their designs, their equipment and their know-how. This addition to the Italmatic stable has given us a tremendous advantage in the retreading sector as we are now one of very few competitors who can supply every element for the retreading process from inspection machines for car tyres through to buffers and moulds for 63 inch OTR tyres.” Production of Italmatic equipment is totally Italian, with two facilities, one at Cassina de’ Pecchi and the other at Lucca in Tuscany. The Tuscany plant
is where the heavy engineering takes place, the manufacture of presses, moulds and autoclaves, while in Cassina de’ Pecchi (Milan) the MGT range of buffers, strippers, builders and presses is made. “MGT offers a very strong range of equipment in the OTR sector and the buffing and building equipment complements our existing production in Lucca where we already manufacture OTR presses and autoclaves. So, Italmatic has become one of the few companies able to supply complete plants up to 63 inches,” explained Massimo. “We can supply full OTR retread plants to existing retreaders wishing to expand into this growing market, or we can supply mining operations wishing to maintain control of their operations. In either case we are able to supply a production manager to help oversee the initial few months’ of production until the local staff are fully prepared to operate and maintain the plant. We supply a suggested list of materials and training allied to a complete package of high tech equipment.”
An example of an Italmatic OTR Autoclave