NEWS
(soon to appear on Macchine Edili, April 2010)
INNOVATION, TRAINING AND SAFETY
An interview with Paolo Salvadori,
president and CEO of Le ORU-IMER GROUP
di Teresa Sari
A story of fifty years, production plants located in Italy, Turkey and Mexico, nine overseas branches and a registered trademark in over 70 world markets.
This is IMER GROUP (European leader in the production of construction machinery, mortar praying and conveying machinery, machines and plants for the production, transportation and laying of concrete, and specialising in construction equipment and Mobile Aerial Working Platforms), of which Le Officine Riunite – Udine Spa (Le ORU) represents the Concrete Machinery Division.
Today Le ORU is able to offer products, solutions and services covering the whole concrete batching chain (production, transportation and laying of material): batching plants with radius lift arms, horizontal and vertical concrete batching plants for the RMC and precast sector, planetary and twin-shafts concrete mixers, overhead concrete distribution, management units, truck mixers, belt conveyors, truck mixer-pumps, truck mounted pumps and recycling systems.
In a wide-ranging interview, Paolo Salvadori, LE ORU president and CEO, deals with associative and market issues, particularly focussing on innovation and safety.
Let's start from the current panorama of trade associations. You have decided to join Unacea...
Yes, I think that in order to pursue the legitimate interests of the construction equipment sector a unitary association is necessary. What we appreciate of Unacea is its obstinacy and enthusiasm in carrying out this battle. Perhaps this association is able to do so because its 'anthropological' profile is the same as ours: operational, slim, without any bureaucracy. By joining Unacea we also hope to encourage and stimulate all the sector's societies and associations to speed up that necessary process of aggregation which should lead Italy, like all European countries, to have a unitary representation, more and more equal to the tasks of a strategic and advanced sector like construction equipment.
What do you intend to do with Unacea?
We have already started last October, with other players of the concrete batching machinery market, to collect statistical data on the sales in Italy of some product lines such as truck mixers, truck mixer-pumps, truck mounted pumps and plants. Now we want to extend the group of the participating firms and the product categories surveyed. Moreover, we took part in FOR-SAFETY, held during Samoter.
What is it?
An initiative combining training and safety, two elements we consider extremely important. We get to the root of the problem of safety through a series of investments in the machines' design and manufacturing, adhering to the requirements of the Machinery Directive, but also introducing additional improvements in order to safeguard the operator to the maximum. With initiatives like FOR-SAFETY, however, we want to go beyond and help the construction firms and the owners of small-sized enterprises by training them directly on crucial aspects such as the production, transportation and laying of concrete batching, correct behaviours, use of equipment, prevention, maintenance and checks, and the importance of using genuine spare parts.
The safety of the working environment and of the products we create represents a pivotal element in the IMER GROUP's philosophy. We think that contributing to carry out prevention and awareness programmes is everyone's responsibility, not to say everyone's duty. This is why we made investments to this end both inside our company, launching the "Zero Accidents" programme in 2009, and outside it, creating products with special devices to safeguard staff by avoiding and preventing accidents during their use, and taking part in initiatives promoting safety. Our last patented safety system is KEYLIFE.
Let us remain on the topic of safety, but let us consider more particularly the innovations unilaterally introduced by the manufacturer. IMER GROUP have announced that they will present at Samoter a "revolutionary patent for the safe use of truck mixers". Could you give us any clues about that?
During the FOR-SAFETY day on 6 March, we intend to present our new KEYLIFE patent: a safety device for maintenance interventions in the drums of truck mixers. The KEYLIFE solution is simple and practical: the rotation of the drum must be blocked before the operator can enter the drum itself. In other words, it is absolutely impossible to get into the drum unless its rotation is prevented through the mechanical block inserted and fixed in its anchor position.
It should be noted that the rotation of the drum may also occur because of gravity, which acts on the residues still to be removed making the drum unstable and possibly causing it to move. KEYLIFE can be applied on all truck mixers currently on the market through a kit to adapt the manhole and the mechanical block. Moreover, in order to allow an ergonomic access from the drum and facilitate the exit in case of an emergency, we have enlarged the dimensions of the manhole. We were the first company on the market to offer a rotation block device as standard equipment more than 10 years ago, now we are the first to offer a definitive solution to avoid mortal accidents – some of which we have heard about also recently.
How was 2010 for the Italian market of concrete batching equipment?
In 2010 concrete batching machines went through a situation similar to that of earthmoving machines in 2009. Truck mixers lost more than two thirds of the market, the sales of plants halved. Thanks to their specific characteristics, truck mixer pumps did better, managing to gain about 16 percentage points compared to 2009.
And what happened in the rest of the world? Which were the most dynamic markets?
To speak of dynamic countries in 2010 is probably excessive, with the exception of China, India and Brazil. Among the countries closer to Italy, I would certainly mention the growth of Turkey.
In that country we have a plant for the production of truck mixers whose performance has allowed us to become one of the first truck mixer manufacturers in Europe.
We hope that the darkest moment of the crisis is over. What will the Italian concrete batching machinery be like after the upheavals we have witnessed? What are the new challenges for the producers of the sector, and particularly for LE ORU, in the future?
The fleeting and uncertain signs of recovery observed at the beginning of January have become more concrete, even if to a lesser degree than expected. Positive signals can be found examining the orders of machines and the trend of the sales, which show upturn, though still in a moderate manner. The prospects for the near future are more optimistic: the sector's enterprises count on a recovery of the home market, although we are still far from the situation preceding the crisis. The Italian construction equipment market (fallen into a crisis at the end of 2008 after more than seven years of growth) has been put to the test and has certainly changed in terms of supply and demand (both in volume and in quality). Some rules have been defined, the focus is now on aspects such as safety (correctness), quality, training, sustainability and the procedures that opened up new market niches and changed purchase parameters. These are the new market parameters that we, as LE ORU/IMER GROUP, are ready to deal with, as we have invested even at moments of difficulty in innovation, sustainability and safety.
However, an effort on the part of the enterprises is no longer enough to overcome the current difficulties: we need immediate and, most of all, incisive interventions at political and institutional level. I am referring more particularly to the modernization of the infrastructures and of the services, and to a reduction of bureaucracy.
What will the truck mixers, truck mixer-pumps and plants of the future be like? In what directions do you think the technological innovation of the sector will move?
It is difficult to answer this question. Certainly, the machines of the future will be more and more in line with the European standards, more and more automated to guarantee maximum productivity, less inefficiency and the elimination of human intervention (a potential source of accidents).
I'd also like to mention the studies that are being carried out on the materials and particularly on steels: ecosustainability, resistance to wear, lightness are the parameters guiding current research.