A recent article in Plastic and Rubber Weekly, ‘UK Mouldmakers fight back’, addresses the transformation of the injection mould tool manufacturing industry in the UK. Due to the introduction of Injection Mould tools from overseas suppliers, at very competitive rates mouldmakers have had tricky decisions to make in order to thrive.
According to the Mouldmaking feature in PRW’s 16 March issue there are three different ways of meeting and responding to the challenge faced:
1) Compete head-on through high quality and rapid turnaround.
2) Migrate from “make” to “mend” – pulling out of new mould building altogether and moving to modification, repair and refurbishment.
3) As a client for large projects, convene a consortium of mouldmakers with complementary capabilities on a “horses for courses” basis.
At Europlaz things are no different, gone are the days of a tool room with 15 highly skilled toolmakers frantically trying to meet deadlines of multi-impression tools. Today, an amalgamation of all three of the above options has been implemented and the strategy is proving to be very successful.
