Coming up the interview gave by our AD Daniele Camisa for the Italian newspaper “L’Industria della Gomma”. The interview appeared on the magazine No.6 in July/August 2013.
Few months later the double review about the Italian enterprise world of the gaskets sector, pubblished last year in November and December magazines, now we come back to interview one of the main protagonist of this sector to know which is the news in this market. It is extremely important to check the endurance of our worldwide market niches in a highly unstable scenario. Rubber gaskets industries are one of those.
The market holds on, although the certainties of few years ago when the orders were planned long run are disappeared. Nevertheless there are more cases with a positive trend than with a negative one. A signal that gives hope because the economic upturn musts set off from the tougher sectors. Even though at the end of the year any forecast seems impossible to do , we can understand through companies’ activism and high rate of innovation that our producers hold on and they are determined to mantain the supremacy in quality standards and prices. These features make our products inimitable all over the world.
1. After these first months of 2013, how does the year trend appear in terms of sales and orders? Any upturn signals?
No upturn signals. We live some periods of very intensive work, for istance due to an important order with a very short delivery and others in which the work drastically slows. In this situation we have to produce in more than two months advance compare to the scheduled delivery, working without any kind of warranty because the order could have been cancelled or modified at any time, causing great problems for us. Moreover we continue to notice a great deal of customers’ bankruptcy, which cause not only obvious loss of new orders, but also the failure to pay of what has already been produced.
2. Concerning innovation in your sector, where does the news occur? Materials, quality and process control systems or in others? And within your company how are you facing the issue of technological updating?
Answering in an orderly way I start saying that the biggest news occurs in the new plastic material sector, especially polymeric foams: different resins combined together with other materials, once completely absent on the scene. These new materials solve many problems of acoustic absorption and vibration isolation. Moreover they are eco-friendly and also used in the packaging sector.
In the field of compact rubber we haven’t any requests of new materials, but on the contrary we have for the foam rubber, where the continuous economical research lead to the abandon of pure traditional rubber mixtures in favour of other mixtures obtained with synthetic polymers. Unfortunately, this is not a signal of innovation because many times the research aims first of all to lower costs at the expense of the technical features. Quality control is another aspect on which we have to focus because today as never before, compliances are burdensome and they have an impact: by now the companies which work following quality standards are many. Moreover, charging expensive penalties for any non-compliance, wheter they are few items with a inadequate price or vice versa very expensive, becomes a common practice.
Concerning process system we are studying a new corporate structure which will be implemented in September 2013. It will be a great innovation impacting all business processes which should ensure efficiency and efficacy during work procedures.
In the end, concerning technological updating, our latest investment dates back to 4 months ago: however it is important to say that we work in a field in which technology probably means a lot or even everything. Therefore, company’s task is being focus on modernisation concerning also all that occurs before and after the manufacture, packaging in the lead.