To cope with the increasing business volume in the Americas and to better serve the American customers in the field of surface finishing and preparation, Walther Trowal is expanding its sales branch in Grand Rapids, Michigan with additional manpower, as well as a process development lab. Even though the sales branch was originally established in Michigan in 2005, Walther Trowal has now officially opened its brand new North American Tech & Training Center.
The company, initially established as a sales office, has become a facility with its own test center, after-sales service activities and a sizable warehouse for compounds, media and spare parts. Effective immediately, two recently hired application and sales engineers, stationed in Grand Rapids, are now supporting the already existing nine distributors throughout the US and Mexico, including the recently opened sales office in Querétaro, Mexico. The local staff is supported by the knowhow and service of the colleagues in Grand Rapids.
The newly established process development lab at the North American Tech & Training Centre is equipped with a range of different finishing machines and offers American customers the possibility to test the Walther Trowal equipment with their work pieces directly in the United States. It is has a specific lab just for coating technology. This allows the customers to test various coating methods and develop the right process for their coating requirements with the Trowal Coating technology.
Ken Raby, Vice President and General Manager of the Walther Trowal LLC, has commented, We consider close proximity to our customers as essential to our future success. With our expanding sales and technical base in Grand Rapids we can adapt our processes and systems much better and, especially, much faster to the requirements of the American users. Especially in the field of mass finishing it is essential to develop and optimize the various finishing processes for our customers through processing trials under manufacturing conditions in our test lab.
Photo caption: Loading work pieces into a CF rotary vibrator for processing.
Image courtesy of Walther Trowal