Wire and Plastic Machinery Corporation reports that it has been chosen by The Marmon Group to liquidate the assets of the closed Aetna Insulated Wire plant in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

A press release said that some inventory highlights include: three Davis Standard CCV lines; four Davis Standard extrusion lines, three Bartell BX-armoring lines, two planetary cablers, two rigid stranders, a Haefely Trench 1000 KVA Hi Voltage tester and a 13-die Bekaert rod breakdown line. An assortment of test equipment, payoffs, take-ups, curing ovens, rewind lines and reels is also available.

All equipment is being sold "as is, where is." WPMC will make arrangements as needed for onsite viewing of all equipment. For more details, e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call the company at tel. 860-583-4646.

Wire and Plastic Machinery Corporation reports that it has been chosen by The Marmon Group to liquidate the assets of the closed Aetna Insulated Wire plant in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

A press release said that some inventory highlights include: three Davis Standard CCV lines; four Davis Standard extrusion lines, three Bartell BX-armoring lines, two planetary cablers, two rigid stranders, a Haefely Trench 1000 KVA Hi Voltage tester and a 13-die Bekaert rod breakdown line. An assortment of test equipment, payoffs, take-ups, curing ovens, rewind lines and reels is also available.

All equipment is being sold "as is, where is." WPMC will make arrangements as needed for onsite viewing of all equipment. For more details, e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call the company at tel. 860-583-4646.

Reliance Communications (RCom) announced plans to lay a 68,000-km undersea cable, estimated to cost $600 million, to carry data across Europe and Asia. 

Per multiple media reports, the system, which will connect its base in India with Italy to the West and Hong Kong on the East, is expected to treble the revenues in five years for its wholly-owned subsidiary Global Cloud Exchange, which is laying the cable. The cable, projected to be operational by the third quarter of 2020, will have  revenue potential of $1 billion per year, RCom Chief Executive Bill Barney told reporters.

The new cable, which was described as being able to reach more than “75% cent of the youth in the globe,”  will increase RCom’s capacity tenfold. The financing will come from partners, which at this point number six, including Alibaba, that account for $300 million. The investor fold could increase to as many as 30. Barney said that RCom expects to get over $700 million through such pre-sales as against the cost of $600 million.

The reports that RCom, saddled by debt, has struggled in recent years, recently exited its consumer-facing wireless business to focus on the enterprise segment.

Barney said the company expects a spurt in IT and telecom activity in the country over the next five to ten years, due to which it is betting on the cable business.

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ABB announced that it has signed an agreement to sell its Huntersville, North Carolina, cable factory to Southwire Company, LLC, for an undisclosed price.

A press release said that the sale of the plant is in line with ABB’s Next Level strategy to continuously optimize its business portfolio. The 240,000-sq-ft plant produces high-voltage and extra-high-voltage underground transmission cables, ranging from 230kV to 400kV. ABB noted that it will continue to produce high-voltage land and subsea cables from its manufacturing facility in Karlskrona, Sweden. ABB and Southwire will also pursue a business partnership to leverage the facility for the land cable portion of certain HVDC projects.

“We remain fully committed to the North American market and to the high-voltage cables business. The decision to divest this factory is in line with our Next Level strategy and focus on optimizing our operations, exploring new business models and building partnerships,” said Claudio Facchin, president of ABB’s Power Systems division. “We are pleased that the Huntersville facility will be in the hands of Southwire, a well-established, innovation-focused company and look forward to building on our new business relationship.”

Per a past ABB release, the company opened the $90 million plant, designed to have some 130 employees, in 2012. The high-voltage cable production was to target markets that include wind and solar installations. “The plant has a distinctive 131 meter extrusion tower, built to allow the insulation material to cool symmetrically around the metal cable conductor. It is ABB’s first high-voltage cable plant outside Europe, and will manufacture high-voltage transmission cables for both AC and DC applications.”

The acquisition, which is expected to close in the third quarter, results in Southwire adding extra high-voltage cable products to its portfolio and expands its capacity to produce high-voltage cable, a market in which the company notes it is already a leading manufacturer.“We are committed to growing in the global wire and cable market. Today, we take another step toward that goal as we further expand our manufacturing capacity and expand our lineup of products that are made in America for new and existing customers, both here and around the world,” Southwire President and CEO Stu Thorn said. “In addition, today’s agreement paves the way for us to develop a strategic relationship with a global company like ABB, a recognized leader in power and automation technologies.”

Located on a 20-acre site in Commerce Station Business Park, the Huntersville plant fits nicely with Southwire’s family of manufacturing facilities and customer service centers in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Honduras and China, the Southwire release said. “Southwire is a U.S.-based manufacturer expanding on U.S. soil,” Thorn said. “We are building a business that will be sustainable into future generations by continually evolving to meet the changing needs of our industry.”