Company Profile
The Pramac Group – A Well Kept Secret – Until Now!
Many users of hire generators know of the Pramac brand and may think that the company makes only generators. However, a brief look online starting at
www.pramac.com would soon shatter that particular illusion. The Pramac Group is a huge business with 4 different business units and multiple manufacturing bases spread throughout the world.
The Pramac group was established in 1966 in Italy, still its main base, but it now has 22 subsidiaries on five continents. Over the years it has built up its portfolio of products and in 2010 the estimated turnover was €186 million. This shows them to be much bigger than people recognize, and demonstrates a sound business approach while highlighting their success in a difficult market.
The Italian manufacturing base is in Siena, where two factories with around 100 employees each, produce diesel engine based generators (up to 3000 kVA) and vertical axis micro-wind turbines. The other factory makes thousands of pallet trucks and stackers each year. As befits a modern European manufacturing facility, these factories are up-to-the- minute, clean and modern, using all the latest technology for maximum efficiency. In Lyon, France, another factory with 45 employees produces up to 80,000 portable generators each year, while in Spain (Murcia) 150 people produce up to 18,000 large industrial generators each year. Being a smart company, Pramac has also invested in Chinese production facilities, hence the large modern factory in
Guangdong that employs 60 people and has a manufacturing capability of 60,000 portable generators and 2,000 industrial generators per annum. And just to prove its worldwide credentials, another factory in Nebraska, USA, uses its current labour force of 50 to build over 80,000 units a year. As already mentioned, the Pramac group designs and makes vertical axis micro-wind turbines, however key to Pramac’s future development is their high technology Swiss manufacturing plant based in Riazzino, Switzerland, where they employee 160 staff to design and produce around quarter of a million (30 MWp) of PV thin-film solar panels each year. In short the Pramac Group has a number of very smart fingers in a number of key industrial pies, since we are always going to need material handling equipment, generators of all kinds (underlined by their use in the recent number of natural disasters we have experienced) and lots more renewable energy production. To give readers some kind of idea as to how these products can be used I quote some of the following examples. Most petrol heads will remember the first “night” F1 Grand Prix held in 2008 in Singapore, but most will not know that the whole event was lit by twenty-four Pramac generators linked with the mains electricity system. These provided quiet, reliable and relatively low-polluting power for a huge and at that time, unique, sporting event. And it gave us Europeans a chance to view the Grand Prix at a time that wasn’t in the dead of night.
For motor bike fans this is also the case with the first MotoGP race of the 2011-12 season in Qatar. For the last 2 years the circuit, for this night race, has been powered by Pramac 1500rpm diesel sets. The Pramac ‘Green Energy’ Moto GP team is well know within this elite environment and has been involved with securing power at many events during it’s 10 year involvement with the sport.
On the other side of the coin, a Philippe Starck –designed vertical axis micro- wind turbine was launched in 2007 and several contracts were signed to produce so-called Democratic Ecology electricity in all parts of the world. Perhaps the main reason why Pramac Group is relatively unknown in the UK is that it hasn’t really had an established Sales and Marketing team in the UK up to now. That has now been rectified and a full team operate from its base in South Wales, with a team of sales managers covering the whole of the UK & Ireland. A key appointment was Managing Director Wayne Steele, who has a deep knowledge and wide experience of the generator market in the UK. Not only has he got the job of bringing the Pramac fuel driven generators to our attention, but he also has to develop the wind and solar parts of Pramac’s product portfolio. New product managers for each division have also been appointed. Their knowledge and experience will no doubt be coming to your attention soon if you are in their particular line of business.
Andy Durno takes on the full portfolio of generators, while Daryn Goldsmith will be dealing with the wide range of handling equipment – from forklift trucks to pallet trucks and all stations in-between. Neil Durno takes on the challenging role of renewable energy product manager, an area that we are all going to be hearing a lot more about in the next few years. New Regional Managers will take responsibility for developing the profiles of
Pramac Group products as well. All the major hire companies should be expecting visits from Steve Sutton who covers the South East, Andy Martin who covers the South West and Stuart Peers whose job is The North! So, from a best-kept secret, Pramac products look like becoming a very high profile range in the next few months. Keep an eye out, they may be just what you need as you consider the energy generation or goods-handling needs of your company.
telephone 01444 440188
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Reply No. 214
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