GRAND RAPIDS, MI — To cope with the increasing business volume in the Americas and to better serve American customers in the field of surface finishing and preparation, Walther Trowal is expanding its sales branch in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with additional manpower and a process development lab. The company officially opened its North American Tech & Training Center.

The company, initially established as a sales office, has become an operation with its own test center, after-sales service activities and a sizable warehouse for compounds, media and spare parts. Effective immediately two recently hired application and sales engineers, stationed in Grand Rapids, are now supporting the already existing nine distributors in the United States and Mexico, including the company’s sales office in Querétaro, Mexico.

The newly established process development lab, equipped with a range of different finishing machines, now offers American customers the possibility to test the Walther Trowal equipment with their work pieces directly in the United States and to optimize their finishing processes.

Ken Raby, Vice President and General Manager of Walther Trowal LLC, is now in a position to serve his North-American customers even better, “We consider close proximity to our customers as essential to our future success. With our expanding sales and technical base in Grand Rapids, we can adapt our processes and systems much better and, especially, much faster to the requirements of the American users. Especially in the field of mass finishing, it is essential to develop and optimize the various finishing processes for our customers through processing trials under manufacturing conditions in our test lab.” 

The new Tech & Training Centre is also equipped with a lab for coating technology. This allows the customers to test various coating methods and develop the right process for their coating requirements with the Trowal Coating technology.

In Latin America, Walther Trowal has also expanded its presence with the recently opened sales office in Queretaro, Mexico. Local staff is supported by the knowhow and service of the colleagues in Grand Rapids.

The capacity of the new warehouse ensures that the Walther Trowal LLC can offer short delivery times for equipment and consumables. The mass finishing, shot blasting and coating equipment as well as the plastic finishing media are still supplied from the Walther Trowal headquarters in Germany. Ceramic media continues to be manufactured at the plant in Stoke-on-Trent, Great Britain.