French polyurethane parts and leading screen printing squeegee manufacturer FIMOR celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2017. In four decades, the family-owned company developed one of the strongest names in screen printing industry with its serilor® brand and a presence in over 80 countries through a network of over 300 distributors covering all spectrums of screen printing. FIMOR is a long-time member of ESMA.
FIMOR premises in Le MansFormer Chairman of the Academy of Screen Printing Technology (ASPT), Alex ZUCKERMAN, the company founder and chairman, confirms the position of FIMOR: “The squeegee may not be the focus of our industry, but you can’t have screen printing without it. It remains an essential tool that can affect the quality and productivity of every screen printer’s job.” Although the share of screen printing squeegees has proportionally declined in the company’s portfolio, it remains a key focus to FIMOR. That very specialisation is credited to the company’s success, as it constantly strives to adapt to the changing economics of screen printing and to the customer’s demands.
Manuel Zuckerman, General Manager and second generation owner, confirms the company’s historic enthusiastic position to screen printing: "The beauty of our market is that this essential tool makes us present in virtually all markets covered by screen printing, from textile to industrial printing, from ceramics to electronics, from graphic displays to label printing... We are providing solutions to companies printing pens, discs, shirts, high tech electronic displays, solar cells or security devices. We even had a customer asking for a squeegee to print crepes! Our final clients range from the occasional mom & pop garage textile printer to public listed high tech companies that operate in white room conditions… yet they are all part of the screen printing community and it has been great to serve this variety of customers and challenges over the years.”
Looking back at the past 40 years, one must recognise the figure of Ms. Michèle Joly who led the company’s screen printing division since its creation and contributed to its international expansion. Retired in 2016, she was the company’s first employee and witnessed all the major initiatives led by FIMOR: introduction of colour coded squeegees, of triple durometer squeegees, acquisition of Encore Engineering’s sharpeners in 2001 to provide solutions to squeegee care and maintenance, super soft 55sh squeegees etc.
FIMOR squeegees and accessories“Today we must face a market that is very mature on one side, and very innovative on the other side”, adds Manuel Zuckerman, “We must provide high tech, customer specific solutions while a segment of our customers in developing economies is tempted by low cost products that don’t always offer the same guarantees or the same chemical manufacturing conditions. But this challenge is common to many of our international partners at ESMA, the European Specialist Printing Manufacturers’ Association to which FIMOR is an active member and that promotes the use of screen among other techniques for printing. We are confident that our product and service level will continue to be recognised and follow the evolution of printers worldwide”.
The owners further explain that investments have been made to develop other markets in parallel to the production of squeegees to ensure a long term growth on several industrial markets. Today, the FIMOR group has close to 100 employees, the majority of which in Le Mans factory, and operates offices and factories in 3 continents. All the squeegee products remain manufactured in a modern factory located 200 km west of Paris that respects ISO 9001 and 14001 standards. Over 90% of the production is exported from France, notably to Asia where the majority of industrial printing is located nowadays, or to the United States where direct textile printing remains very strong.
