By Rhoda Miel
STAFF REPORTER
Published: November 14, 2013 12:01 pm ET
Updated: November 14, 2013 12:03 pm ET
Increasing interest from molding companies in South America and Central America is prompting Italian mold maker Giurgola Stampl srl to consider how it could open a branch in the region.
Giurgola Stampl specializes in tooling for the packaging industry, especially caps and closures with both unscrewing molds and flip tops. It has seen sales increase steadily during the past 18 months in its existing customer base, but also business is coming from outside Europe, said Tomaso Maggi in an interview at K2013 in Düsseldorf, Germany.
"Companies from Brazil and Mexico are ready to buy," he said. "They have the money, they want to spend it and they are interested in the technology we can bring them."
During the early days of K 2013, the interest has continued to build from Latin America, he said, with some customers asking if the company, based in Briosco, Italy, is ready to open a satellite business there.
Expanding across the Atlantic also makes more business sense than moving into other regions of Europe, such as Russia, which the company can service from its existing production, he said.
The problem is that it will not be easy for a single company to expand, so instead Giurgola Stampi is looking at the potential to open a maintenance center in Brazil that it could share with other mold makers to ease the transition, Maggi said, but he is not sure when the final decision on expanding would come.
The interest from the Americas is a change from three years ago at K2010, he said. At that time, the company had a lot of business contacts from India and just a few from firms in Brazil and Mexico. This year, the demand from outside Europe has almost completely flipped. | 
