Friday 22 July 2016

Marmo Arredo - a successful company

Romeo, Gianni e Vincenzo Scapin
Short company history 
The company was incorporated at the end of the 1970s.
The first factory, specialised in stone fabrication for building construction, was built by Patriarch Luigi Scapin and his sons, Vincenzo, Gianni and Romeo. This was the beginning of Scamar, Scapin Marmi
Over the early years demand from the building sector make it possible to grow the business, and its focus on innovation allowed the company to become the first stone fabricator to offer stone elements for interior design and furniture, in which the market was wide open with tremendous potential for growth. 
The first step was to increase the level of precision of the work processes, which was achieved by adapting the existing machine tools and purchasing the first NC stone working machines.




The second step was to rename the company in a more market-oriented manner: the new name, Marmo Arredo, is literally “marble” and “furniture.  
Success under the new name was instant and the percentage of sales made through this new line of business began to grow steadily to the point that a working fabshop was gradually transformed into a thriving industrial concern


Alongside developments in the production cycle, the company started to look into the use of new materials and identified engineered stone as the ideal material for interior décor and furniture.


Marmo Arredo was the first fabricator to understand the potential of this material, transforming it and promoting it throughout Italy and the rest of the world
Thanks to technological developments and the arrival of new materials, the company expanded rapidly, installing the very latest machinery and setting up the first automated feeding and cutting cycles. 
The machining systems were gradually perfected, gaining millimetres of precision and slashing machining times, but the art of the craftsman has always been retained in the finishing processes, which are still performed manually by skilled masons.

With the dawn of the new Millennium and the experience accumulated, the company set itself a new goal: to automate the entire production process, from the arrival of the raw material to the creation of the semi-finished product.
 
Marmo Arredo at EUROCUCINA 2016 fair

A futuristic new plant was inaugurated in 2006: a Breton automated warehouse with two continuous processing lines. This is a world-first plant for series production of kitchen worktops in particular: constantly evolving, the plant is the motive force driving the company's prodigious production capacity.



In the same period, burgeoning demand for high thickness worktops led to the incorporation of Eulithe, a specialist in the production of rigid polyurethane foam of various densities.


The company's aim is to meet demand for a non-absorbent antibacterial material to be used as a structural support for lightweight tops.  
With its new patented formulation, Eulithe produces chips rather than dust when it is machined and it has met with significant success over the years to the point of creating an alternative market; five years after the startup the product name became the name of an independent company in 2008.

The onset of the economic recession at the end of 2000 had only a marginal impact on the business because the high level of past investments had produced a solid and compact organisation ready to face contingent setbacks and even allowing for expansion in 2010 with the acquisition of Quartzforms, an engineered stone production plant (Bretonstone - here you can read his history) located in Magdeburg, Germany.
 


Controlling the entire production process and overall process quality now became a reality, from the raw material to the finished product.
Marmo Arredo is now present on the market in an increasingly proactive and efficient manner, and the company's vocation for research is shown by the continuous registration of new patents and development of advanced technological solutions. This forward-looking approach led to the company's most recent initiative: the Offmat research laboratory.


How has your business performed over the past year (also in terms of sales):
What was the situation at the close of 2015?

The growth trends are proceeding in the right direction. Over the past five years Marmo Arredo has consistently achieved growth in sales of double-figures, while Quartzforms has actually quadrupled its turnover since 2012 (the year of its entry onto the world market).



How is the market performing in your sector?
How has your market changed due to the recession and what are the possible strategies needed to overcome negative conditions in this period?

Our sector is affected by trends in the furniture sector, which is currently recovering despite some continuing setbacks. The downturn allowed us to perfect and optimise our products and processes, leading us to focus on customer retention by refining our offering of services, including technical assistance and maintenance, and by concentrating on reliable deliveries and packaging systems, coordination from the project stage through to the time of installation, and research into alternative materials. 

What do you produce? 
Marmo Arredo converts natural stone, marble, granite and engineered stone for building construction and furniture design.
The company's core business is kitchen worktops, alongside several related products: bathroom counter-tops, table tops and furniture accessories, floor and wall surfaces, bath tubs, carved blocks and sculptures
.
Marmo Arredo at EUROCUCINA 2016 fair

Quartzforms is a manufacturer of engineered stone slabs.




Eulithe produces rigid polyurethane foam of various densities, packaged in blocks or assembled with other materials in sandwich panels.

What are your most important markets? 
The most important markets for Marmo Arredo are currently Italy and other European countries in relation to the daily output of kitchen tops, bathroom tops and furniture accessories. On the worldwide stage the company operates through contracts or with custom-made projects.


Do you have any plans to extend your range of action?
Quartzforms is growing rapidly worldwide, from Australia to South America, the Arab states and the Far East, with product distribution also in the US and Canada.
Conversely, the company operates in Europe through a close-knit sales network supported also by a new warehouse in Verona (Volargne) inaugurated in May 2016 in a logistically strategic location to optimise the level of service delivered to our customers.

What technical and technological innovations are likely to emerge in the near future in your areas of operation?
We believe the future will see the integration within worktops of all the functional elements the surface can support, depending on the application: wireless chargers that will be developed to the point that they can power small home appliances, capacitive and touchless systems to control operating modes, mechanical movements for recessed sinks or storage compartments that are flush with the top surface when not in use, integrated scales and induction hobs, ventilation systems and cyclone separator hoods built into the worktop.
To support such complex integrated functions manufacturing precision and production techniques must be ramped up to the nth degree in order to shave tolerances and bring the material machining capabilities to their limit conditions.

Use of Breton machinery.
Which models do you own?
The models currently installed in the group's facilities are as follows:

Marmo Arredo
1 Contouring machine Contourbreton NC 180
1
Contouring machine Contourbreton NC 160
1
Contouring machine Contourbreton NC 350
1
Contouring machine Contourbreton NC 400
1 Bridge saw Smart-Cut OPTIMA 800L
2 Combicut: Bridge saw + Waterjet
1 Multicut TAP 7-spindle automatic trimming machine 
1 GoldenGroove automatic machine for cutting straight V-profile grooves 
1 automated slabs warehouse complete with handling system
Quartzforms
2 complete plants for the production of Bretonstone slabs
2 slab polishing lines

Improvements in terms of quality, speed, etc. with respect to other products used previously?
Breton machines are a point of reference for our company for two reasons: the quality of the products and the company's nearby geographical location, which has led to ongoing collaboration between the two firms over a period of around thirty years. The benefits are many and they vary in relation to the machine models chosen from Breton's extensive range. The mechanical robustness of the machines and their outstanding precision is backed up by highly functional and intuitive software, with facilitated interaction for standard operations.

After-sales service and support? 
One of the key aspects and main advantages of working with Breton is the exceptional level of after-sales service, which offers a rapid response in emergencies and is manned by highly skilled and helpful technicians.


For more information and prices, on the Breton machines, contact mail@breton.it.
We’ll get back to you promptly.
Thank you for the attention and best regards.
Bye-bye

Sergio Prior

2 commenti:

  1. I wish to have some more related articles about water cutting machine,
    You have done a great work,
    laser cutting

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Richard,
    Tomorrow you can find NEW post about Waterjet machine here:
    http://fabshopmachines.blogspot.com/
    Best regards,
    Sergio Prior

    ReplyDelete