Austrian extrusion equipment manufacturers are losing business to 'inferior' copies of their tooling

Austrian extrusion equipment manufacturers are losing business to 'inferior' copies of their tooling

Austrian extrusion equipment producers are losing ‘several million’ Euros of business because of piracy by Chinese tooling firms, according to manufacturer Technoplast.

The company is joining with other Austrian extrusion equipment makers A+G, Greiner-Extrusionstechnik and Gruber-Extrusionstechnik to put a stop to the practice, which is affecting business in Europe and the US as well as China.

Accepting there is little that can be done to halt the piracy in Asian markets, Austrian producers managed to get an exhibitor ban imposed on offenders at the NPE 2003 fair and subsequently reached agreement with Chinese producers that no pirated extrusion tools would be sold to Europe or the USA.

But Technoplast owner and chief executive Werner Kampichler said the agreement had not been effective. “Sales are being made even to our long-standing customers from producers who do either very little or absolutely no development work of their own, pushing down the prices.” Confiscation of pirated tools in Europe is under consideration, the company said.

Meinhard Schwaiger, technical manager at Technoplast, claimed the two most serious offenders were Jari Tooling and Tong Ling, although there are others. He added the Austrian companies were concerned about existing designs, as future developments are now protected and enforceable in China following its accession to the WTO.

Technoplast has turnover of around E40m and claims to be the second largest extrusion downline system supplier worldwide. It has recently supplied 294 downline systems to Dalian Shide’s profile extrusion plant in China, with Cincinnati and Krauss-Maffei supplying the extruders.