Pulp Paper & Logistics
INDUSTRY NEWS 19 CRISTINI All this would add to the
profitability of the European paper industry. But that has been a key plank in Cristini’s recent development, which has increasingly built on its core press fabrics and felts business with a range of innovative diagnostics systems. Last year Cristini celebrated its
centenary of being formed in 1914 when Giuseppe Cristini purchased Soc. Francesco Fogliardi, augmenting the capacity of the family-owned firm Cristini Bros & Co, which had been producing woollen felts and blankets for e range of applications. What might have been a disaster in 1953 turned out to fortuitous for the company, when the village of Marone, where Cristini was based, was catastrophically flooded. The company moved to Fiorano at Serio, where it is still located, and flourished. The move enabled expansion
in production capacity. Since then it has evolved so that now three-quarters of its production is in endless press fabric with the remainder in seamed fabrics. Now, a second Italian plant makes fabrics for forming, dryers (woven), TAD, engineered and corrugated belts. It also has a production plant in Canada,
near Montreal. Developments made in non-
woven press fabrics and the replacement by wool with synthetics in the early 1950s is what has kept Cristini at the forefront of an industry that has consolidated from about 30 European producers in the mid-80s to just five now. Giovanni reckons that the company is one of the leaders for reliability and customer satisfaction in the use of seamed press fabrics. In 1956 it patented the world’s first seamed press fabric. The next key development was in 1999 the diagnostic systems project was started. Cristini needed more data to understand the processes of drying more effectively, but at the time a reliable technology did not exist to measure the parameters at line speed, so it enlisted the help of the University of Florence to develop a broad-based sensor technology. The result was a partnership that evolved into the FiberScan, the world’s first microwave consistency meter. The benefits to mill owners of this technology was twofold: there was no need for the previous systems using radioactive materials handled by trained specialists coupled with a reduction in
The impressive frontage Fiorano al Serio headquarters of Cristini in Italy
maintenance costs, better data reliability and product quality. Running alongside this
development was the safety aspect and workers safety in particular which drove the development of an on-line system rather than the previous hand
held system. With the new sensor based system installed on the machine and connected via the DCS it offers total controllability over production trends. This real time scanning can also highlight other problems such as human impact or problems 4
PermFlowDUO, Cristini’s portable felt moisture and permeability meter
Cristini’s board of directors: (l to r) Luca Baroni, Giovanni Cristini, Maurizio Fusar, Vittorio Montiglio and Riccardo Michelotti
January/February 2015
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