Piovan Group will be at K 2019 – stand 9B60 – to present its wealth of hi-tech solutions that focus on sustainability, Industry 4.0, traceability and system integration
Piovan Group has enjoyed a significant growth in recent years, continuing on the path that started more than ten years ago and led to it becoming an international group in continuous expansion.
2018 was a key year, not just in terms of turnover – Piovan Group closed 2018 with a consolidated turnover touching €246 million (up by more than 15% compared to the previous year) – but also thanks to its listing on the Milan Stock Exchange. Being a listed company gives the Group a higher international profile and increased visibility with major customers, attracts talents to the company and enables the Group to maintain its strategy of growth and good governance in the future.
The first part of 2019 was also exciting, with new branch openings, including Piovan Morocco, and the acquisition of new companies: Toba, a leading South-Korean company, based in Seoul, specialising in the automation of industrial processes for the plastics sector and particularly in the production of plastic powder conveying and storage systems, and Fea Process & Technological Plants, an Italian company based in Cuneo that specialises in the automation for the food industry.
Piovan Group at K 2019
In mid-October, the 2019 edition of the K Show will open its doors. The K Show is the most important international exhibition devoted to plastics. From 16 to 23 October, more than 3,000 exhibitors from over 60 countries are expected to crowd into the pavilions in Düsseldorf’s exhibition centre and more than 200,000 visitors from all over the world.
Piovan Group will be at K 2019 – at stand 9B60, with its own brands, Piovan, Aquatech, Fdm and Penta.
A wealth of hi-tech solutions will be on show in the exhibition: from drying systems to temperature control, from traceability of the raw materials to solutions for industry 4.0, to provide complete turnkey solutions. However, the K Show will not be about technological product developments only. Particular focus will be placed on fundamental topics such as sustainability, Industry 4.0, traceability and system integration that all have one aspect in common: innovation.
Focus on innovation
Piovan has always invested resources in innovation and the Group today employs over 171 R&D and engineering experts that can assess the specifics of any customer request, drawing on the knowledge acquired over the years. The Group’s various teams of technicians supply not just stand-alone products but also integrated solutions that maximise shop floor efficiency and performance, providing customers with tangible benefits and concrete advantages.
High-efficiency systems for PET treatment and handling of recycled materials.
Not only stand-alone machinery but also complete and integrated solutions for PET systems. At K 2019, the new Genesys line will get its world premiere. This drying system is distinguished by self-adaptive technology that is now also optimised for the treatment of recycled PET. The new dryer can automatically manage the drying process by setting all the critical parameters: from the process air flow rate to its dew point value, from the residence time to the temperature, maintaining optimum operating conditions even as hourly production and initial temperature and humidity conditions of the plastic granulate vary. The innovations that this new generation machine brings include more intuitive control and improved self-regulation.
Significant improvements have also been made to the AIPC (Automatic Injection Pressure Control) technology that ensures the lowest production cost for each preform, not in terms of energy savings alone, but in terms of optimisation of the entire preform production process, with increased end product quality and reduction of rejects.
Regarding solutions for PET, at the Düsseldorf exhibition, visitors will be able to check out the new user-friendly range of instruments for analysing preform quality. These devices enable the most important parameters, such as the acetaldehyde level in preforms, to be measured in a simple and intuitive manner.
Accurate dosing
Also Fdm, the Group company based in Troisdorf (Germany) specialising in the production of advanced solutions for extrusion applications, will showcase new dosing technologies at K 2019, with the GDS 5, the new gravimetric blender of the GDS line optimised to enable mounting up to 5 granulate stations, while still maintaining compact dimensions and featuring a Siemens PLC system.
Handing of materials with Penta and Piovan
Penta, the Group company that designs and produces large systems for storing, conveying and dosing materials in powder or chips, will present the latest innovations in the production of pipes and cables for managing additives in the compounding sector. At the exhibition, visitors will be able to see Vakupulse, a system that will be in operation to show the conveying of materials in the dense phase, which is particularly suitable for conveying delicate raw materials at low speeds and flow rates over short distances.
For the first time on display at K 2019, a manual coupling station equipped with the new coupling system. This unit enables to easily connect the pipes, even if only one hand is used. It is gasket-free to prevent contamination, ensuring that plastic granules come into contact with stainless steel only.
Particularly remarkable is undoubtedly the new RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tagging system which checks that the match between sources and destinations is correct. If an error occurs, the conveying system does not activate the loading cycle, thus avoiding any risk of contamination between different materials. A system of LEDs, which can also be duplicated on a dedicated display, guides the operator. The LEDs changes colour as the conveying pipes are coupled, enabling active connections to be checked at a glance.
Ready for medical applications
At the exhibition, Piovan will present important innovations also in the medical sector: a new microdosing unit will be on display for the first time. This unit is able to feed the machines even with only one granule at a time, whilst maintaining very high accuracy to meet requests that come mainly above all from highly technical sectors such as the medical sector and precision micromoulding.
The medical range is also complemented by machines suitable for usage in clean rooms, such as the Pureflo filterless receiver, which requires neither compressed air nor maintenance, and the emission-free DPA dryer.
Cooling solutions
Aquatech, the Group company dedicated to industrial cooling and temperature control technologies, will be in the limelight with many product innovations on display in a dedicated area: from temperature control units to new adiabatic dry coolers.
The Easytherm range of temperature control units, the mould temperature control units that won the IF Design Award 2019, will be completed with the new pressurised temperature controls that will complement the line of atmospheric temperature controllers. There are also interesting innovations related to the DigitempEvo water-cooled thermochillers that ensure high performance whilst keeping energy consumption levels very low. Special focus also on the Easycool+ line of chillers: this range of extremely compact chillers has been conceived, designed and engineered to meet the specific cooling requirements of plastics industrial processes with unrivalled efficiency.
Sustainability and circular economy
For Piovan Group, sustainability is a daily commitment.
The plastics industry requires constant attention to Research and Innovation in order to devise processes that will ensure the responsible transformation of raw materials, sustainable production and low environmental impact, in order to move towards a circular economy.
Piovan develops technologies and solutions that contribute to increasing the use of recycled materials, enabling a broad range of products to be created using post-consumer PET as a raw material. As proof of its constant commitment to these issues, since 2006 Piovan has been developing technologies to give new life to recycled material by once again transforming it into bottles.
More generally, the decision to invest on high-efficiency solutions has made it possible to reduce CO2 emissions and energy consumption related to plastics processing. Customised plants, profitability, efficiency and reliability of the processes are the main guidelines of the technological development of the Piovan Group, especially when it comes to plastic recycling and bioplastics.
Ever closer to 4.0
Industry 4.0 is a key topic on which the main players are increasingly focusing. Piovan continues to invest in innovation, extending the range of features offered by the Winfactory 4.0 supervision software. This software also includes a module for monitoring energy efficiency and, from this year, a module to monitor Aquatech solutions.
Data context integration and digital interconnection throughout the process: these are the guidelines of Industry 4.0 from which MTS, the new material tracking system, has been created. MTS consists of a new barcode terminal capable of reading barcodes for the identification of users and materials and a new app, developed to guide the operator in the management of raw materials. The system enables to optimise the storage of materials and to identify the flow of different batches from the initial phase to the finished product.
A new brand identity for Piovan Group
At the beginning of 2019, a new Group corporate identity was launched, to convey even more effectively that this is an international group consisting of many companies sharing a common denominator: the attention to customers and to its people, following the three pillars that have always characterised this group: Customers – People – Innovation.
The new Piovan Group logo is characterised by a pictograph with three circles evoking the Group’s values, its business sectors and its strengths:
• 3 values: Customers. People. Innovation
• 3 businesses: Plastics. Food. Cooling.
• 3 strengths: Global Presence. Service. Team.
The new corporate identity spotlights a restyling of the graphic image. A crisp and sober graphics aimed at bringing together all group companies within the same vision. Piovan, Una-Dyn, Fdm, Aquatech, Penta, Progema and Energys: they all adopt the same graphic style and a new “Piovan Group” pay-off to highlight their belonging to a single group. “The previous payoff, ‘Customers. The core of our innovation’, and the key values ‘Customers, People, Innovation’, will however continue to be the leitmotiv of Piovan Group’s communications”, underlines Mr Dal Bo.
