Ronda announced at BaselWorld this year their (re)entry into the fray of mechanical movement producers.  Ever since ETA announced that it would no longer serve all customers there has been great concern by many brands to get replacements for the ETA movements they have been using.  
Ronda is a major producer of high quality quartz movements and had also in their history produced mechanical movements, up into the 1980s.   Ronda produces their parts at several sites in Switzerland and does assembly of those parts both in Switzerland (Swiss Made Movements) and Thailand (Swiss Parts Movements).

Four years ago Ronda made the strategic decision to reenter into mechanical movement production and have very quietly developed a completely new movement that is a drop-in replacement for the ETA 2824-2, although the overall height is something less allowing a watch designed directly for the Ronda R150 movement to be thinner.

Ronda is now producing in pre-production and is planning to start the full production line at the end of the year.  They are talking of quantities of several 100k movements a year in a couple of years.
The pre-production movements look already quite finished and all the people at the Ronda stand were wearing watches with R150 movements for "on-the-arm" testing.

Let's welcome another participant in the entry level mechanical movement range.  Ronda has great experience in the making of large quantities of movements and the quality control needed to satisfy customers and still make a profit. These may not be the horological art that we dream of, but they form the basis, the entry into the mechanical world and the quantities that allow the watchmakers to dream of other things.  We need them.