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On Thursday, June 7, 2018, the expert in rubber injection moulding, REP international had an appointment with a large number of its customers, partners and suppliers to celebrate the company's 111th anniversary at its head offices in Corbas on the outskirts of Lyon.
Coming from all over the world, the 275 guests could measure the significance of the investments made by REP international in the past three years to modernize the production facilities and offer leading edge technologies turned towards Industrie 4.0.
Let's look back on this event, which was shaped by innovation and exchange through the 4 highlights, which set the rhythm of the day. Technical conferences with some of them held by partners of the company followed one another throughout the day. Intended to showcase the technologies of REP international, such as the operation of the injection moulding presses, the process and equipment optimization for dual-compound injection processes, the improvement of the injection cycle or optimized profitability thanks to automation, the conferences were further completed by the solutions of REP's partners. In this way, Chem-Trend introduced their demoulding agents designed for tool cleaning, Sigmasoft® their simulation tool "Sigmasoft® Virtual Molding" for the autonomous optimisation of rubber materials and LSR with regard to new mould designs and process setups. Elmet in turn detailed the liquid silicone process enhanced by the special application of fuel cells. Finally, ENE concluded the topics with the industry of the future backed by REP Pack 4.0, REP's software package made of 11 modules.
The 111th anniversary was also meant to inaugurate the "Area 111", the new showroom dedicated to injection moulding demonstrations and to the presentation of existing and new technologies to the visitors. Inside the showroom area, there is also a space dedicated to REP Net 4.0, a software program of REP Pack 4.0 designed to link presses to a data centralization terminal. This software program checks the process quality in real time, centralizes the mould settings and allows retracing the production schedule.
Various vertical and horizontal machines with the characteristics extending from 40T to 1,000T clamping force and from 125cc to 11,4000cc shot capacity were shown. They represented the staged product range offered by the company, including G9, G10 Core Lean, configurable G10 Extended Hi-Tech machines, the CMS G10, RT9 and G9A presses and also complementary products designed for devulcanization, compression presses, without forgetting the operating Microject with automated demoulding.
The day was finalized by the speech of Mr. Bruno Tabar, the C.E.O. of the company, who emphasized how much the company REP international has strived during its 111 years of existence for steady innovation and technical development spurred by its founder Robert Esnault-Pelterie, inventor of various milestones in the field of aeronautics and astronautrics. We also want to underscore the group's international reach with 3 industrially oriented companies (Corbas, China and India) and 6 subsidiaries dedicated to sales and servicing (Germany, USA, Italy, Brazil, India and Russia). Servicing is reinforced by the technical support with more than 30 locations all over the world aiming at locally servicing more than 30-year old presses.
At the end of the day, a cocktail and musical entertainment was organized to allow our guests to come together and to spend a nice moment together.
With a turnover of approximately 60 M€, with 92% in foreign markets, for around 250 injection moulding machines and 100 compression presses a year, the group operates a fleet of more than 12,000 machines installed in more than 1,000 customer plants in more than 77 countries.
There is no doubt that REP international is actually ranking among the great players in the field of technology and will keep concentrating on "Shaping" the industry of the future, just like highlighted in the slogan of the event.
