RMGT the joint venture created by Ryobi and Mitsubishi to combine their sheetfed offset press manufacturing in 2014, is running to capacity as Indian customers have discovered over the past year. Demand for RMGT presses especially in longer configurations and larger sheet sizes in the developed markets in Japan, Europe and the US, have often meant longer delivery times for Indian printers. Nevertheless in the current financial year at least five RMGT presses will be installed by Indian commercial and packaging printers.
At the time of the recent IGAS event in Tokyo, the news came that RMGT is adding a third building for press manufacture at its Fuchu City headquarters, in Hiroshima prefecture. The site also contains the Ryobi manufacturing plant for automative castings and other metal products. The third building for building presses will add 4,400 square meters of production space and is to be completed by October 2023.
RMGT is in its ratio of resources to press units perhaps the leanest sheetfed offset press manufacturing company in the industry. Currently 60% of the larger presses are being partly produced in the old Mitsubishi factory in Hiroshima. This production will shift to the new building as it is completed next year.
At the third manufacturing plant, RMGT plans to accommodate new assembling tools, such as large cranes mainly for the assembly of large sheet-fed offset printing presses. By expanding the number of factories adjacent to the current 1st and 2nd plants, RMGT says it will integrate all the plants’ functions together to optimize the total production system and increase efficiencies.
We spoke with Vinay Kaushal of Provin Technos, RMGT’s Indian distributor last week who explained that the press manufacturing lines at Fuchu are running at full capacity and even over capacity. He added that the company is keen to bring down the delivery time of its presses. RMGT continues to gain traction in the commercial printing and packaging markets with its automation and productivity enhancing features.
Photo Nessan Cleary
In India too, the first highly configured packaging press, a 7-color plus coater with LED interdeck curing has been sold to HBD Packaging in Greater Noida. In the commercial space two 8-color perfecting presses have already been installed at leading book printing exporters, at Thomson Press in Faridabad and the second at Multivista in Chennai which will be inaugurated on 22 December 2022. This is Multivista’s second 8-color RMGT perfector – the first was installed since 2018.
The news of RMGT’s expansion in manufacturing confirms that the sheetfed offset press market is resilient with emerging economies still having great demand for printed cultural products. Secondly, it could be an indication of the company taking some market share from the other four major offset press manufacturers.
