US glass manufacturing showing rapid growth

—Sponsored article by Machines Italia

Italy, as one of the main suppliers of glass processing machinery to the US, is poised to take advantage of a rapidly growing US construction market, said Laura Biason, deputy director of Gimav, an Italian association of manufacturers and suppliers of glass processing equipment.

During an interview related to GlassBuild America in September, Biason pointed to data from the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation (MAPI), showing glass processing is among the fastest growing manufacturing construction sectors in the US.

An economic report on US manufacturing by MAPI found non-metallic mineral processing—including glass—grew at a rate of 59 per cent in the first half of 2015.

“Manufacturing construction is booming right now,” said MAPI’s chief economist Daniel Meckstroth, in a September webcast. “We see a strong increase in glass…all coming from the housing supply chain ramp-up.”

This preference for Italian-made machinery could be felt at the GlassBuild event, Biason added, when 20 Italian Gimav members and one non-member company arrived in Atlanta and attracted a “considerable amount of interest.”

“The 1,000 square-metre area occupied by the Gimav group exhibition was a crowd-puller, with a wide range of Italian machinery and products on display where potential buyers could see and touch the new [products],” Biason noted.

Italian companies are so innovative that “we were very proud of going overseas as a Gimav group exhibition because the producers of glass processing machinery, products and accessories offer the highest levels of quality and innovation that the world expects from Italian products,” she added.

This article was adapted from an earlier version in Glass in IT Style.