"In the five years I have worked here at Negri Bossi, and I would say independently of market trends, I witnessed multiple forms of interest in our brand in any given quarter, confirming that - objectively - it is a very strong brand. For certain not all forms of interest we saw were equally worthy of being taken into consideration. It is in fact clear that in some cases the goal of the "suitor" was, shall we say, to swipe suppliers. In others, it was perhaps to absorb one or more technologies, to compete someone else's range. In other cases, actually quite frequently, the interest came from private equity funds which, as we know, only handle the purchase to then resell at a higher price.

These opening words are those of Craig Ward (top right in the photo, together with Antonio Rampone, area manager for Negri Bossi), managing director for Negri Bossi, during the meeting with the specialist press on Tuesday, November 26, at the facility in Cologno Monzese of the historic machinery manufacturer founded in 1947 and which, since 2014, has belonged to the Kingsbury group.

At that occasion, Ward made the official announcement that on November 21, 2019, Kingsbury had signed an agreement for the sale of the majority of Negri Bossi shares to Nissei Plastic Industrial, adding that the “closing” was scheduled for January 2020 and that, however, Kingsbury will maintain a minority share.

Not present at the meeting because of – how can we put it? – objective geographical questions, Hozumi Yoda, president and legal representative for Nissei, let the attendees know that "the purchase of Negri Bossi will ensure business based on a fully reciprocal relationship, both from a geographical and product standpoint, particularly in terms of automation."

Ward made some interesting clarifications about the "reciprocal" growth mentioned by Yoda. "It is blatant that today, the development of many operational details of this collaboration are still in progress; despite this, it has already been established that, after signing the agreement, we will be among the 10 leading suppliers in the world for plastic moulding injection machinery. This is possible in virtue of the strong synergy in terms of product and trade between the two manufacturing bodies. From a commercial standpoint, Negri Bossi is present in Europe and on the east coast of the United States, while Nissei is more active in Asia and in the rest of the United States, with as many as six facilities. In terms of product range, Nissei has a long history in the production of hydraulic clamping unit machinery, while Negri Bossi is known for its toggle-joint clamping unit. And moreover… we offer machines featuring high clamping forces, while the Nissei range reaches up to 1300 t. But it is on automation that the question becomes more interesting”.

And here Craig Ward moves on to the Sytrama brand by the Roboline company (acquired by Negri Bossi in 2011), which produces Cartesian axes, linear axis, and linear motor robots, and is specialised in manufacturing equipment for pick up and handling of injection moulded pieces. Which, significantly, has permitted Negri Bossi to become the supplier of complete solutions for their clients, developing high performance, integrated custom automation solutions.

"It will seem strange," Ward continued, "but Nissei possesses less expertise in robotic assistance in the production stages. It should not, therefore, come as a surprise that Hozumi Yoda, in person, has placed the focus on this topic, because he is aware of the ever-increasing importance of being advanced problem solvers."

This aligns well with the Roboline Syntrama mission.

"From the beginning at Negri Bossi, we decided to consider Roboline in terms of being our privileged supplier, where clients ask us for advanced solutions, but - in parallel - the company also supplies solutions to other companies, including the competition, why not! This is how, though being "only" a system supplier for plastic material applications, we feel the impact of the physiological oscillations in the economic situation... Roboline is experiencing a practically unstoppable growth trend in its revenues," Ward pointed out.

Because automation, we at MacPlas add, is the root of progress.

"We are and we will continue to be Negri Bossi, with our machines and with our team," the managing director concluded, "because this is what our clients want. The only difference is that now we have a major industrial partner behind us, backing us as we share the challenge of delivering an ever-improving service to moulders."