Mimaki Europe has solidified its relationship with its Italian distributor, Bompan, by setting up a joint venture, Mimaki Bompan Textile, albeit with Mimaki owning 51 percent of the new company.
Hirokazu Hayashi, who is also listed as acting general manager for Mimaki’s Global Service Support department, is leading the venture as CEO. Massimo Bompan, founder and president of the Bompan company, is the Chairman of the joint venture company.
The joint venture was actually set up a year ago on 21 June 2017 but was not widely reported on so Mimaki Europe sent out a press release last week, worded as if this has just happened. Hilariously, this means that some English-language websites have reported this story at the end of last week as ‘breaking news’, which it really isn’t.
Instead this joint venture is a follow-on from Mimaki’s acquisition of La Meccanica in 2016 and the launch of the Tiger 1800 textile printer at last year’s Fespa show. Bompan has already acted as Mimaki’s exclusive distributor for the Italian wide format market for over two decades so it makes sense to use this as the base for a dedicated company to sell into the textile market. Hayashi commented: “This joint venture is a critical element of our strategic approach to the textiles and apparel market.”
He added: “In addition to this joint venture, Mimaki Europe has also pursued partnerships and acquisitions that will help round out our textiles portfolio, including most recently Rimslow, a manufacturer of post-treatment solutions for textiles. This expansion will help us provide our clients with a complete solution for high volume textile production.”
Hayashi says that Mimaki Bompan will be responsible for marketing the entire Mimaki portfolio for textile printing in Italy but Bompan says that the intention is for the joint venture to “be an international one-stop center for the textile market.” The joint venture will cover the Italian market, some European countries and will also act as a hub for textile printing worldwide offering training courses and on-demand testing for customers worldwide.
Mimaki Bompan Textile should be operating as an independent company from September of this year. Bompan itself now has three divisions – Sign and Graphics, Industrial printing and a new 3D printing unit.
You can find more details about this at Bompan.it.
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