Fontijne Ghyselinck gains first tyre and wheel assembly machinery orders

Fontijne Ghyselinck, part of the Fontijne Grotnes Group, has received its first two orders for major tyre and wheel assembly machinery from leading OEM manufacturers.

Having become an ‘approved supplier’ for a well-known French vehicle manufacturer in 2013, Fontijne Grotnes Group became a supplier of tyre and wheel assembly equipment and within a few months their first official order came through. The procured line has been commissioned in Turkey and includes an automatic fitting line that starts with part recognition, automatic tyre and wheel soaping and fitting. The line is suitable for 14 up to 20-inch products. At the end of April testing engineers successfully finished commissioning this mounting line in Turkey. The equipment has been successfully running for six days a week, three shifts a day since May.

Inflation unit for leading Italian tyre producer

The second order was placed by “a leading tyre manufacturer” based in Italy. The scope of this order was an inflation unit and a bead optimizer for 16 and 18 inch product, for a newly constructed factory in northern Brazil. This machine has a production rate of 275 assemblies per hour. This inflation line will be commissioned halfway August 2014, and need to be in full operations at the end of August.

“We are very proud to receive such major orders from renowned companies”, says Jacob van Balen, executive vice president of the Fontijne Grotnes Group. “With the knowledge and skills of the former Ghyselinck engineers combined with our own skilled staff, we managed to meet the stringent requirements of the customer and completed these projects successfully”.

In addition to these orders Fontijne Ghyselinck reports that the company is also working on several process upgrades and retrofitting packages for existing equipment.

Fontijne Ghyselinck is the relatively new name for a combination of two well-known suppliers to the automotive industry. This new company has been established through the acquisition of Ghyselinck NV by Fontijne Grotnes Group back in July 2012.

Zedelgem, Belgium-based Ghyselinck brought with it 55 years of experience in the development and manufacturing of automatic tyre and wheel assembly lines. This new company combines the forces of two technology leaders and is designed to serve the automotive world “in an advanced way”.

The Belgian company focused mainly on the Western European market and established a strong reputation in the past few decades. The current customer base includes automotive manufacturers, like Volkswagen, Renault and Peugeot, tyre and wheel manufacturers like Pirelli, Michelin and Continental and service centres (tyre fitting stations).