Hi Group,

This was posted by the moderator of the V Accordion Forum on Yohoo! He lives in the UK.

"A few hours ago the news broke that the Roland factory in Italy is in the hands of the Receivers. At the moment, it is not at all clear what the position will be as regards support, etc for the V-Accordions and other instruments. Our best wishes for the future go out to the 150 employees. More news as it becomes available."

No wonder it took almost 3 months for my new FR-8X to arrive.

Don P

The link:
Roland Corporation closes the establishment of Acquaviva

Translation from Italian:

ACQUAVIVA PICENA - The Roland Corporation Japan on the board of directors of today has acted the liquidation of the Roland
Europe'Spa in Acquaviva Picena, which is owner to one hundred per cent. The reasons for this difficult decision are due to a drastic reduction of the costs and necessary reorganization due to a negative balance of a multinational that lasts for some years. In its restructuring plan in the medium term it plans to increase production efficiency by centralizing the latter in the East. The news certainly weighs down an already difficult employment situation of the Piceno and also at the establishments of Acquaviva of the Roland currently employs 150 employees.

Maybe they are moving operations to China? It usually all comes down to labor costs.

Sad news for those workers, to be sure.

Ian

Shades of GeneralMusic's demise!

I think they have had a cash-flow problem for sometime! According to my dealer RolandUS was having to pay cash for the delivery of each FR-8X accordion. Who knows!

Ouch...

Do Roland Italy manufacture the arrangers at the same plant? My label says RolandEurope as manufacturers, and doesn't specify where in Italy it is made.

Interesting. I wonder what the person who spends most of his time in the Tyros threads trashing the Tyros would be saying if this thread was about Yamaha going into receivership?

Yes Diki,
Roland Europe is the designer and manufacturer of VAccordion and BK line (btw some bk cheap models are already produced in China)
Roland Italy instead is the distributor of Roland Japan in Italy (no design, no production).
probably bk an VAccordion will move to Japanese engineers and Chinese production.

the news is about Roland Europe, not Roland italy.
it's up to you to judge the news.
bye

It's only a little iceberg....

You need to up your comprehension skills. This is NOT about Roland going into receivership. This is merely their Italian manufacturing plant (is this all of them or just the one plant?) going down, and in all likelihood production is going to be shifted to China.

And, if this happened to Yamaha's arranger plants in any non-Chinese location, I would be no more exulting this than I am Roland.

Perhaps you need to read what I post with a little more accuracy and a little less heat under the collar. I 'criticize' (you can substitute 'trash' if you want to invent an issue that doesn't exist, for whatever reasons you wish to become outraged) certain aspects of Yamaha's. I guess I need to start using larger fonts, bold and ALL FRIGGIN' CAPS to get some of you low attention span readers to notice where I praise OTHER elements of Yamaha arrangers.

Seems like you notice the least criticism and then the blood-flow shuts off above the neck!

I'm not sure either whether there is only this one plant of Roland Europe in Italy. According to this SOS article about the Roland history, there were five plants in Italy in 2005 (see section "Siel & Roland Europe"):
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan05/articles/roland.htm

However, the bad news is that not only this factory, but the company headquarters of Roland Europe S.P.A. are also based in Acquaviva Picena, so I fear the complete subsidiary is being dissolved.
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=8355130