Jul 25, 2017 
Europlacer Industries is completing two substantial expansion programmes at its manufacturing site and French HQ in Rocheserviere, near Nantes. The investment increases production floor space by almost 40% as well as adding 240m2 of prestigious customer demonstration and training space.
Over the past two years, Europlacer has increased its placement platform sales, added 20% to its employee headcount, enlarged its spares and stock holding, and ramped up the number of weekly product shipments from the Rocheserviere site – which manufactures Europlacer placement platforms and feeder systems for all markets world-wide. In addition, the company has recently augmented its own placement platform manufacturing with a distribution business that represents premium equipment from selected business partners.
Most of the new factory floor space is given over to placement machine build. This enlarged production facility is supported by new areas for stock, feeder manufacturing and Kanban kitting. “We could see that our production capacity lagged behind our growth strategy, and that efficiency would soon become compromised due to the expanding order book and increasing head count,” explains Stephane Huet, Rocheserviere Factory Site Manager. “But apart from investing to accommodate our gratifying organic growth, we also seized the opportunity to build a smart new customer area in parallel. This features bright and spacious demo facilities, training rooms and presentation suites constructed to the highest specifications.”
The demonstration area will accommodate Europlacer’s complete product range, configured as two fully-operational Surface Mount production lines. It will also include equipment from Europlacer’s distribution business partners. “As well as hosting customer demonstrations and equipment acceptance procedures, these smart new resources will be used to welcome our international teams for sales and service training,” says Huet.
In addition to the primary works, the new construction projects demanded internal alterations to the existing building, to linkways between buildings, new access ways (with independent access to the customer area) new car parks and redesigned shipment access – the latter featuring international-standard freight loading bays.
Work on the manufacturing floor expansion and the new customer area is on target for completion by the end of July.
The Blakell Europlacer Group comprises the Speedprint Technologies, Europlacer, and Blakell Europlacer Distribution business units. All three are active and pre-eminent in the electronic circuit board assembly sector with advanced product and service solutions for electronics manufacturers in the UK and globally. Speedprint Technologies is a provider of screen printing equipment used in surface mount assembly processes. Europlacer is a provider of surface mount component placement equipment. Blakell Europlacer Distribution augments the provision of screen printing and pick & place platforms in the UK with a range of associated equipment, including AOI, reflow and PCB handling.
