VMI South America Ltda, in Itatiaia Brazil, officially opened

On May 12th, the new facility of VMI South America Ltda was officially opened with an open house for customers and suppliers. VMI South America has relocated to a new and larger location in the city of Itatiaia, about half way between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Managing Director Robson Souza de Araujo and his team now have approximately 1,350 m2 floor space at their disposal, comprising of a workshop and office space, all required for VMI’s increasing activities in South America.

VMI South America Ltda is the service hub for all VMI equipment users in South America, with direct spare parts supply from own stock. The new VMI Itatiaia facility furthermore includes a depot repair facility, dedicated for maintenance and repair of VMI’s highly advanced mechanical tire building & shaping drums, which are in use in several tire plants in South America. With various depot repair facilities spread across several continents, VMI assures a quick maintenance turn-around time of these drums.

The VMI South America facility is also the production-assembly location for VMI’s successful RETRAX program of tire retreading machines for that region. VMI RETRAX is a machine for retread cushion gum extrusion smearing and, optionally, a high accuracy pre-cured tread application. The VMI RETRAX program ‘made in Brazil’ was introduced in South America in 2016, during the PneuShow Expo in São Paulo. This new generation VMI RETRAX machinery replaced the previous well known VMI-‘AZ’ CTC program. The VMI RETRAX machines are sold directly by VMI South America Ltda to customers in the region.