Pluritec: Growth Depends on Developing Next-gen Products

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Maurizio Bonati, VP of sales at Pluritec, says a new generation of products has driven strong business performance and a significant backlog. However, there’s a concern about the potential negative impact of tariffs. Pluritec is taking proactive measures to minimize these effects by focusing on enhancing equipment capabilities, automating processes, and expanding customer support.

Marcy LaRont: Maurizio, what is Pluritec’s “state of the state?”

Maurizio Bonati: Pluritec’s business today is strong. At the moment, we have a significant order backlog, which is mostly related to new-generation products that the Pluritec group has developed to answer specific market requirements or concerns, which makes this a very exciting time for us.

LaRont: What’s most on your mind with the new U.S. administration? How does this play into your strategy for the next few years?

Bonati: With President Trump back in office, what actually transpires with the trade war and tariffs could have a negative impact on Pluritec’s business, as will certainly be the case with many businesses. Therefore, we are taking proactive measures to minimize any negative effects on our potential exports to the U.S.

LaRont: How are you being proactive for the benefit of your customers? 

Bonati: We are focusing on multiple areas, including enhancing equipment capabilities to directly answer technology challenges and designing equipment that will allow optimization and streamlining of manufacturing processes to reduce the overall cost to manufacture for our customers. We are also working to automate more processes, to help customers overcome their labor constraints as they struggle to find qualified laborers.

On the service side, we have expanded our customer support team and optimized its structure to ensure very high quality and timely and effective assistance. Today, we find ourselves in a uniquely advantageous position to offer personalized, value-added solutions to our manufacturers. As I said, we are excited about where we are today and the future ahead, regardless of the challenges. There are always challenges.

LaRont: What is the most pressing issue for PCB manufacturers in this age of electronics manufacturing, or are they all equally important?

Bonati: Marcy, there really are many issues, and they are all important. Since COVID, and in different ways, we have struggled with supply chain issues. The geopolitical landscape and the most recent tariff activity being implemented by the United States bring the supply chain back up to the top of our concerns.

I mentioned the lack of skilled labor, something we all struggle with, but nowhere more acutely than in PCB and EMS manufacturing. Much of our innovative work in equipment design and optimization will continue to be around automation to enable factories to need fewer workers to do the same or better quality of work.

Finally, and this has garnered even greater attention with President Trump taking over the U.S. presidency, we struggle with what we see as unfair competition from the Far East, now both China and China Plus One countries. Both Europe and the U.S. are making more investments in their respective electronics manufacturing infrastructures, but when will that trickle down to the rest of us? We do not know.

This interview originally appeared in the April 2025 edition of PCB007 Magazine. To read the rest of the issue, click here.