Nordmeccanica has accustomed us in recent years to live important days, under the spotlight like last May 25th on the occasion of the 4th episode of “Nordmeccanica Events”, during which it was presented the laminating machine Linear to an audience of over 1000 customers connected from all over the world. The day then ended with the visit of Giancarlo Giorgetti, Minister of Economic Development
The numbers presented to us by Nordmeccanica president, Antonio Cerciello, speak for themselves. We had the pleasure of meeting him at his company headquarters for a chat the day after the visit of Giancarlo Giorgetti, Minister of Economic Development, right in the Nordmeccanica headquarters in Piacenza, where are designed all the innovative technologies with which the Cerciello family has conquered world leadership in the field of laminated flexible packaging. In the last year Nordmeccanica, which employs about 300 people globally, has grown further, presenting its latest technological innovations to customers, also planning new expansions for the factory in Piacenza, because as tells Eng. Cerciello, “the company is in full growth and we are not stopping. We expect to have completed the new production areas within three years, the development plan will start in July 2021 with the opening of the fourth plant of 3,000 square meters covered, scheduled for the first months of 2022, with the hiring of new staff. On our side, we have resources that allow us to compete with much larger multinationals, with a reactivity and timeliness in responses to the market that only a family business can guarantee”.
I have known Antonio Cerciello for over twenty years, and I have had the opportunity to closely follow the growth path of his company, a story made of passion, love for one’s work, desire to invest and to propose highly performing and innovative technologies to the market. A path in which Antonio Cerciello was able to involve everyone, from the first to the last of his collaborators and he personally knows them one by one, up to the entry of his sons Vincenzo, technical manager and Alfredo, financial manager, all united by the same values and the desire to improve day after day.
I want to take this opportunity to congratulate president Cerciello for his appointment as Knight of the Order to Merit of the Italian Republic, received last June 2 by president Sergio Mattarella: a prestigious recognition to a great entrepreneur, who has always worked with commitment and dedication, leading his company to be a leader in the world, achieving considerable goals also in the sports field, and always particularly active and also present in the field of charity.
With the pandemic, a great boost to packaging with an eye to sustainability
“During the pandemic, after the first few months, I brought my collaborators together and we started the “Nordmeccanica Events” series, because I absolutely didn’t want to lose contact with customers and the market. I have traveled the world far and wide, since 1974 I have spent more time on airplanes than at home and today if we close orders for important machinery by telephone it is thanks to everything I have sown in the past, cultivating relationships all over the planet”, says Cerciello. Those who know him know that one of his priorities has always been to give a lot of importance to the human side of work events, so the direct knowledge of customers, and the trust that can only be established when there is a relationship because not even friendship, is one of the secrets of the success of this family-run multinational company.
“The pandemic also highlighted how much there was a need for packaging solutions for food and pharmaceutical industry, thus shifting consumption indices towards packaged products, a phenomenon which, however, can have an important impact on the environment”, continues Cerciello, “as a consequence all our efforts and the resources we dedicate to research and development (about 5% of annual turnover) have been directed towards innovations and processes that can favor the recycling and composting of food packaging”.
Linear, eco-sustainable laminating machine for recyclable and compostable packaging
During the live broadcast on May 25th, Eng. Giancarlo Caimmi and Eng. Vincenzo Cerciello presented the latest technological developments that led to the creation of the new Linear model. All lines in the Nordmeccanica range have undergone an important upgrade of the electronic structure, thanks to the close collaboration with Siemens, and this renewal has made possible to install and start up machines at customers’ premises more easily during the period of the pandemic.
The Linear model in Duplex configuration presented in worldwide live streaming represents the state of the art in the field of coating and lamination, with a series of innovations aimed at reducing the environmental impact, both from the point of view of the production process with lower consumption of energy and raw materials and as regards materials produced with solutions capable of responding to requests for recyclability and, as regards food packaging, compostability.
“We work with the precise intention of offering the market valid solutions for solvent-free lamination, even if there are applications that inevitably require the use of solvents, for reasons related to the resistance of the final packaging, so in this case our efforts have concentrated on optimizing the drying system, the recirculation and all those technical characteristics that contribute to the reduction of solvent emissions. One of the innovations presented at the event concerned the use of adhesives with a high solid content, which allow to reduce the amount of solvent dissolved in the formulation with the direct consequence that there will be less solvent to be disposed of, anyway the impact is almost exclusively of an energetic nature, given that the solvent is now always recovered from the post-production plants”, says Eng Caimmi.
In fine-tuning the Linear machine presented at the event, were obtained the highest levels of performance that today’s technology can achieve, thanks to the integration and management of data with an Industry 4.0 perspective.
“Nordmeccanica today is a global supplier both in the food and pharmaceutical packaging sector but also for coating, with machine solutions, trolleys and coating heads essential to create the barrier effects required by the market. The synergy with our metallization division completed our offer. The pandemic has given new impetus to a sector that has proved strategic, today the Government has understood it, so much so that the taxation policies on plastic have been postponed, but this does not mean that we must not look to the future and offer the market more and more sustainable solutions, taking the protection and conservation aspect of the product for granted. The ongoing collaboration with various suppliers of raw materials was born precisely to achieve this goal”, says Vincenzo Cerciello.
“We have several projects in the pipeline, also in collaboration with multinational adhesives, with which we are committed to find solutions that allow, with the same functionality of packaging, to be able to further reduce the use of energy by 50% during production but also of the material used in the production process, both with and without solvent-based adhesives. The market asks us for it, our customers ask us, we owe it to the environment and to our children for their future. Nordmeccanica is there, it invests and will continue to do so”, proudly concludes president Cerciello.
The appointment is with the fifth episode of the Nordmeccanica Events, scheduled for next autumn, when the new metallization plant will be the protagonist with the latest innovations that will offer the transformation market metallized materials, replacing aluminum, increasingly performing from the point of view of barrier, and perfectly recyclable.
