Investing for the future

Since it was founded in 1974, this family-owned business has been producing paper impregnation lines for high- and low-pressure laminate production and supplying them to markets that are truly global, while firmly maintaining 100% of production within its Vigevano headquarters, southwest of Milan.

"The market for us in 2011 was very positive, with a lot of orders, and 2012 is looking very good too," said Emiliano Tocchio when WBPI visited his company's headquarters in early June.

"In recent years, our business has been 70% outside Europe, mainly in South America, Russia, the Middle East, India and South East Asia. There is still some investment in western Europe too, mainly Italy and Germany, for our impregnating lines."

Mr Tocchio reported that there is a tendency for his customers with panel surfacing lines to have demands from their customers for smaller and smaller batches of panels with a specific surface colour or finish.

"This means that our lines not only have to be high-speed, but also very flexible to cater for these frequent changes, while reducing waste," he said.

"We can optimise our line so that if a customer has a particular programme for his HPL or LPL presses, we can adjust the impregnation line accordingly. Here we are often helping the clients of our clients.

"To assist our customers with these requirements, we have developed two systems. One is the launch of two high-speed pallet change systems to minimise paper sheet rejects to less than one sheet per specification changeover.

"The second is a system to reduce energy consumption by modifying the software and by means of an energy recovery system, using exhaust air to reheat the dryers," said Mr Tocchio.

Apart from impregnation lines, Tocchio offers the full package of resin kitchen, gravimetric resin dosing systems, on-the-line measurement devices for paper weight and moisture and air cleaning systems.

"We also offer pre- and after-sales service, suggesting the most convenient/suitable additives to use in the resins, particularly for customised products which a customer may require. For example a high-gloss mirror-effect surface on the paper for LPL, or scuff resistance," said Mr Tocchio.

He is also particularly proud of one of his company's achievements in the phenolic paper field. He said Tocchio supplied the fastest line in the world for impregnating Kraft paper with phenolic resin for HPL production, which is running at up to 300m/minute in Brazil.

In fact, phenolic resin impregnating lines are an increasing part of Tocchio's business in the field of coating plywood for concrete shuttering panels - a growth market in North America and Russia.

In another development to better serve its customers, Tocchio has recently started an investment in facilities to serve the Asian market.

"We manufacture all our machines totally in our own factory here in Vigevano and we are continually investing in research and development and in new engineers for the future of our business," concluded Emiliano Tocchio.