º Italy’s Bonfiglioli Riduttori is building a $16m factory in southern Vietnam to be build motors for its own use. The 94,000m2 plant, Bonfiglioli’s largest investment outside Italy, is expected to produce 324,000 motors in 2009 and 623,000 by 2011. The motors will be exported back to Italy.
º The global market for control and processing equipment will exceed $71.6bn by 2010, according to a new forecast from Global Industry Analysts. It says that Europe remains the largest market, with sales worth $20.5m last year, and that the German market will exceed $9.5m by 2010. Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region are the fastest-growing regions with CAGRs of 3.8% over the period 2000–2010. Sensors, transducers and transmitters are the fastest-growing technology, with a CAGR of 4% from 2000–2010.
º The Swedish HMI specialist Beijer Electronics has signed a strategic agreement with Wonderware under which Beijer’s high-end Windows CE-based touchpanels will be combined with a subset of Wonderware’s InTouch software and sold worldwide as Wonderware Compact Panels. The panels, with displays from 6.5–15.1 inches, will complement Wonderware’s existing industrial PCs.
º The Belgian gearbox manufacturer Hansen Transmissions is building a €200m factory in Tianjin, China, to produce wind turbine drives. The factory, on a 250,000m2 site, is expected be fully operational by early 2011 and will have an annual output capacity of 3,000MW, and a 600-strong workforce.
º Sales of packaging machinery in Europe, the Middle East and Africa will reach €13bn by 2012, according to a new report from IMS Research. Retail packaging accounts for more than 75% of the market with sales of beverage packaging machinery being worth €3.1bn, or 30% of the total, in 2007. The beverage packaging market is predicted to be the fastest-growing sector for the next five years.
º The Chinese linear motor manufacturer Harbin Electric is buying the Weihai Hengda Electric Motor company, which manufactures high and low voltage, AC and DC motors. The acquisition gives Harbin a full range of motors from linear machines, to rotary motors and speciality micro-motors.
