Focus on Italy: Imeas | 33
“We didn’t lose any orders, just postponements, the impact on our turnover was quite important but only due to the shift in deliveries.”
Imeas had projected a €20m turnover for 2020, but realised €16m, due to several big projects being moved to 2021. However, order intake has been strong for new machines and spare parts. Services were affected the most because
technicians were not able to travel due to restrictions in some countries. When Imeas engineers return from some regions outside Europe they have had to isolate for 10 days. This means they can’t go to the next customer immediately. “To overcome this problem, we are hiring
Above: Machines installed in Sokol Segezha: top/bottom sander (right) and top cross-sander (left) Imeas sales director Francesco Zenere
told us that Imeas had this year supplied to Structurlam one sanding unit for CLT operations – for calibrating and finishing the top face of CLT boards – and a new machine altogether for Structurlam’s glulam beam production line. Both are at Structurlam’s new factory in Arkansas.
In the case of the new glulam line machine, Imeas had to develop a new machine entirely as it had to expand its expertise from the sanding of two faces for its traditional wood- based panels applications, to sanding all four faces – the sides included. “We have never sanded the sides of a product,” said Mr Zenere, Imeas sales director. “On panel products the sides are thin and are often cut in further production operations and so don’t need sanding. “The glulam beams can be 500mm thick and, in the case of Structurlam, the machine has been designed with an opening up to 700mm in order to allow the passage of a beam.”
It’s the first time Imeas has made a machine specifically for the glulam market. “The challenge was to design a new machine. The sanding belt is twisted by 90O so it is running in a vertical axis instead of horizontally. You have to properly tension and keep the belt in place, running fast and reliably for many hours.” The other problem was to follow the shape of the beam – a glulam beam can be extremely long and curved for roof support applications. So, the Structurlam machine was built with a central frame supporting the two opposite sanding units, which were independently adjustable. It took nine months to finish the drawings and was “a big challenge”, requiring a new production plan, new CNC programming and a different assembly regime for Imeas technicians. Now it is up and running in the Structurlam factory. Imeas will now market this solution
to global engineered wood product manufacturers, promoting its speed and high quality over manual methods of sanding glulam beams.
DEALING WITH THE PANDEMIC In terms of the pandemic, Imeas was faced with similar issues to most companies in early 2020. Its production stopped for nearly two months at the start, but by May 2020 it was in production again.
The main impact was the postponement
of deliveries, some of which were shifted into 2021.
“The impact of this postponement clearly caused a shift of the turnover of the company, so what we were expecting at the beginning of 2020 was not possible to be realised due to this stop-go of the worldwide economy,” said Mr Zenere. “Because [coronavirus restrictions] didn’t happen in all the countries at the same time it was sometimes difficult to explain to some global customers what was going on in Italy.
new workers. This will be beneficial to the business to have more people to deploy worldwide,” added Mr Zenere. “In China we have two workers that can travel in the country.”
Imeas reports reducing demand from China in recent months. It formerly absorbed 50-60% of Imeas’ production, but it is nearer 20% of turnover now. “We have projects in many countries and regions, including South America, Canada and the US. There are many requests coming from these territories and probably many orders will come shortly. Europe is also strong, especially on the CLT and stainless- steel segments.”
Imeas’ order pipeline currently extends to 12 months. “Of course, there were years like 2008/9 when there was a big economic crisis and delivery times were shortened to six months and a pipeline of four to five months. We are now getting orders for October next year.” Delivery times in 2020 were impacted by the global shortages of shipping containers, with machinery having to sit in the factory for longer awaiting transportation.
Above: EvoL machines delivered to Camsan (Turkey)
www.wbpionline.com | October/November 2021 | WBPI
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