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Keep reading...Framas’ strategy has always been to grow its production capacity in countries where its customers, mainly major sports brands, have located their manufacturing facilities.
For some years now, Vietnam and Indonesia have been the destinations of choice for the most important sports footwear manufacturing groups to set up their large-volume production facilities. It is no secret that companies in the supply chain, such as those that produce uppers for sports shoes and those like framas that produce soles have also chosen to open factories in these countries.
Framas already operates three factories in Vietnam specializing in the production of advanced material components using injection molding technology. The latest development is the installation of two new Gusbi machines, each with 80 stations, at one of the plants, dedicated to the production of midsoles using foam casting technology.
The aim is to consolidate its position as a direct supplier to Tier 1 factories – the first point of contact for brands, those who manufacture the finished shoe, receiving components from the level below, known as Tier 2. No longer suppliers of part of the sole, but rather of the entire bottom unit, which can be an assembly of many different components: not only outsoles and midsoles, but also carbon plates, TPU shanks, external counters, etc.
A first full bottom unit project was presented at the Portland trade fair last August, together with partner Synergy in Motion, a Vietnamese company specializing in the production of midsoles with SCF & SEM technology.
The new Gusbi technology which allows for casting was developed for PU moulding and is well suited to the production of midsoles using the innovative materials including Liquid TPU (Smartlite-O) technology from Huntsmann.
A typical feature of casting moulding technology is the reduced cycle time, which can be as short as 5/6 seconds, allowing for a productivity of 500/600 pairs of soles per hour on a plant configured like framas’s. The expectation is to increase production capacity to around 2 million pairs of finished soles per year.
Casting technology is also well suited to co-moulding, i.e. moulding the midsole directly onto the outsole, which is previously loaded into the mould. By working with materials that have a chemical affinity with each other, it is possible to achieve adhesion between the two parts during the moulding process without the use of adhesives. This obviously reduces manufacturing lead times because it avoids the subsequent bonding step between the midsole and outsole, as well as all the previous stages of preparing the supports, which still mainly use solvent-based chemicals.
«We have been working on these technologies for more than three years. Initially, they were installed at the headquarters in Pirmasens, Germany, to fine-tune processes and materials», says Yannik Bauer, Technical PU Expert from framas Group.
Alberto Buffonini, International Sales and Marketing Director at Gusbi, adds: «The machine was custom-built in collaboration with the framas Group team of technicians. We have optimized the technology to the maximum for the type of materials that the company intends to use in this new development.»
With this investment, framas Group consolidates its leadership in the sports footwear segment, particularly for performance use, but also paves the way for the manufacture of components for everyday shoes, which are increasingly influenced by best practices from the world of athletics.
