Sama‘s "
hybrid" technology for isostatic pressing of the
cup body and
pressure casting of the handle is, at present, the best on the market in terms of product quality and cost optimisation. So said
Francisco Proenca, Technical Director of
Costa Verde S.A., a leading Portuguese company and one of the world’s most advanced producers of quality tableware, in the course of an
interview with German trade magazine CFI.
Installed in 2014 and the last of a series of orders placed with the Sacmi Group’s German company, this system has -
18 months on from its start-up - undergone performance and productivity assessment to see whether the investment has lived up to expectations. The outcome? "
Extremely positive", explains Costa Verde’s Technical Director. All thanks to the Sama system which, on the one hand, guarantees
unbeatable production process repeatability, with immediate benefits for
product quality, and, on the other,
considerable cost savings due to both the absence of any downstream drying processes and a limited need for finishing tasks prior to handle gluing.
It is, in fact, the
high return on investment provided by the
increased yield of high-quality articles - +7% for the cups, over 31% for the handles - and by energy savings that allow Costa Verde to sustain the high cost of developing the resins for the cup handles. These aspects of Sama technology, reveal Costa Verde management, have enabled
net savings of over 150,000 euro due to the increase in both plant efficiency and general output quality.
Summing up, Francisco Proenca stated this to be the best way to respond effectively to a constantly evolving market demand which may soon see production of their popular
coffee and cappuccino cups (90 and 170 ml respectively) extended to containers as large as 500 ml, items that can readily be made using this technology: with the goal –already largely achieved by Sama with respect to traditional manufacturing solutions – of slashing the need for manual finishing tasks upstream from the kiln.