Flavio Marchi- Executive Vice-President and GM GI EMEAI: The Sherwin-Williams general industrial product division, we're committed about to know three things: our people, our customers and our process. We are world class general coatings division, so really committed to our customer and their customers as well. So today I'm gonna talk about the little bit 'bout the whole year investing in our processes, to ensure that our customer will succeed in the future, therefore we can continue to support their development and their technologies for use to come.
Today we are here in our largest manufacturing site in Minerbio, Italy, to discuss and present to you the largest investment that we are making in the region, in order to improve our process, improve our quality and improve our output to our customers that are buying bonding metallic products. This investment, beside giving the opportunity to increase capacity, to increase quality and to increase service for customers, will enable us to become even more sustainable, given the process we are using in the state of theory to next generation equipment for bonding metallic products.
Monica Fato. Engineering Manager: The project has been in the works since 2019. We carefully analysed the market and our customer needs, in order to determine our facility improvement. We looked into: quality, safety and sustainability requirements and selected a technology that could give us all of this. In fact the equipment is inerted with nitrogen, and we control the level of oxygen through all the process for safety reason. Consistency from batch to batch, air bonding quality, and reduce cycle time are the major gains of this project. Finally with us reduce cycle time, and the possibility to measure the energy consumption like kilowatt and nitrogen per batch, we are in a position to better understand and improve our energy footprint. The building and the layout have been designed with an eye to lean manufacturing 5S and Tact Time Concept. And from the very beginning we involved all the strategy functions like: operations, quality and safety. Construction started in October 2021 and now finally, after equipment installation and commissioning, we are in a position to run the equipment at full capacity by the end of 2022.
Federico Marchi - Senior Director, Channel-toMarket and General Finishes EMEA: Sherwin-Williams has a long history in bonded powders, with more than 20 years experience here in Minerbio. The new and improved technology allows us to increase our output by bonding higher quantity of pigment, leading to better quality and faster production. Our previous bonding equipment had limitations in terms of percentage of metallic content that could be bonded. This new device is the state of the art of technology, and improve our offer by far. Weathering building products, general finish, heavy equipment or design, we are equipping ourself to better serve the man manufacturer are facing in the industry.
Flavio Marchi- Executive Vice-President and GM GI EMEAI: As I mention before this is one of several multimillions euros investment that Sherwin-Williams is making in the general industrial division in era. This one in particular, particular in Minerbio, enables us Sherwin-Williams and our customers to become more sustainable, more consistent, and with better quality to our customers. This is our commitment to our customers and our people that will continue to invest in technology and processes.
