GEKA establishes formal U.S. presence

With the metal fabricating market in North America primed to grow as society emerges from the pandemic, a 100-year-old Spanish machine tool manufacturer is poised to take advantage of the economic expansion, working from its new facilities in the U.S.

While plenty of companies pulled back investment dollars over the past year, family-owned GEKA established an administrative office in Maryland and a warehouse in northern Illinois. The name should be familiar to manufacturers, as the company’s ironworkers have been sold in the U.S. since 1978.

Allan Ruiz-Rivas, the company’s director for the U.S. and Canada, said having a formal presence in North America was important because “the U.S. is our second home.” GEKA USA will give the company the opportunity to be more responsive to customer demands.

“We want to be closer to the market, customers, and our partners. We want to listen and work more closely with them,” he said.

The Maryland facility houses administrative functions such as sales, service, and engineering. Installations of GEKA equipment and maintenance and repair requests of existing equipment are coordinated through this office. (Distributors are still a key part of the sales structure in the U.S. for GEKA, and some new companies will be joining the sales network, according to Ruiz-Rivas.) The warehouse, about11,000 sq. ft., is the place where equipment is assembled, custom options are added, and parts and consumables are kept.

The company also designs and builds CNC lines for punching, marking, and shearing angles and flat bars. Ruiz-Rivas said a majority of these machine tools are custom-designed around a specific customer challenge. As an example, he described how GEKA recently repurposed CNC punching equipment to accommodate abrasion-resistant steel, which was to be used in a snow plow application. That is not something that a typical job shop would require, but it met the need for this company and its niche product.

That won’t be the end of assembly work being done in the U.S. GEKA USA is going to expand the product line for the U.S. market based on how market response is for the products in Europe.

Ruiz-Rivas promised more machine tool announcements at FABTECH in Chicago, Sept. 13-16. The plasma tables will be assembled in the Illinois facility as well.

—Dan Davis, Editor-in-Chief