Wood & Panel

Massimo Di Russo

Massimo Di Russo

Massimo Di Russo – Managing Director, Cefla North America and Roberto Bolognini, Roberto Bolognini – Sales Director – Cefla Finishing indulges in an engaging conversation with Wood & Panel during AWFS, Las Vegas. Excerpts.

woodandpaneleurope What is your expectation and what makes this show a must visit for you?
Massimo Di Russo: AWFS has always been a must for us to come. It has lost a little bit of the original scheme and importance that they had in the last years has gained again the importance. Throughout the years of crisis was a little slower one of the editions but this has been a good exhibition for us mainly in the West Coast and in the Mid US. Not much attendance from East Coast, it’s more regional.
 
woodandpaneleurope What are the innovations you are showcasing in AWFS in terms of new products?
Massimo Di Russo: We specifically for this, let’s call regional exhibition, we are focusing on small finishing cells and automation as you can see this system offers loading and offloading automatically doors but it’s a very versatile system that can handle also more, for the industry, nonetheless this is for doors but can be adapted towards this type of productions and it also offers labour reduction. We are focusing mainly on automation that customers really want the finish precisely and eliminating the labour part which is always very costly.
 
woodandpaneleurope In terms of USA as a continent, how much they have accepted industry 4.0?
Massimo Di Russo:The larger groups are absolutely integrated into the industry 4.0. It’s a must have for us, all the large customers we have, we have the largest corporations are absolutely innovating their factories with this. So, we are happy and satisfied with this system. It’s absolutely a necessity. Although we don’t stop there because we are taking industry 4.0 to the smaller shops as well tracking a lot of activities, understanding the consumption, it’s important for the small woodworking guys as well and we focus a lot on that.
 
woodandpaneleurope We talk about integrated network solution. What do you think thats a call for USA?
Massimo Di Russo:Integrated network is the key solution and very important for any large factory. Imagine, there is an IRP internally to the facility and we can fit right into or we can plug right into that ERP. So, for us is creating or to have that integration so, we are an open source, we develop everything in house so we can really customize the service is looking for.
 
woodandpaneleurope Tell me something about your Mexican market. How Cefla is doing there?
Massimo Di Russo: We follow up all the market strategies and its going great. We directly follow up the Mexican customers from Italy. Canada is an excellent market for us that we handle from North America. But all the American Corporation that have direct investments in Mexico are managed by Cefla North America.
 

Roberto Bolognini: Yes, and if they have got premises in Mexico, they handle them because the headquarters are investing. Whatever is in North American Corporation which is customers from Mexico coming to trade shows here, we handle them from Italy, the team of people that are following Mexico is same who are following USA which is the matter of let’s say efficiency and coming to trade shows is all worth of travelling.

 
woodandpaneleurope Cefla’s largest investment in North America comes with 150,000 sq ft facilities. If you can tell us more about the supreme facilities and how can your customers get from Cefla North America finishing unit service?
Roberto Bolognini: Cefla has invested incredibly in North America and the facility is absolutely a top-notch facility where we have the second biggest laboratory in the world showcasing most of our technologies in which the North American customers can come and test together with their main supplier. Our technologies making sure the processes are well understood, tested them and confirm them. Besides, there is a very strong after sales service team which is covering the entire North American market from Charlotte all around the country and as well a very important stocker of spare parts so that we can provide very quick services to the market in terms of spare parts delivery from the States. This is again a must have to be able to fulfill the requirements of big, medium and small customers in the States and providing a very quick service to them. As well as production, we also have a manufacturing unit within our subsidiary in the States where we are producing all the DV system products. So, we are very proud to say that we have a portion of our production made in US which is supplying also some kind of solutions for the flooring industry as well as vacuum application and curing all made in USA.
 
woodandpaneleurope Briefly tell me about the ‘PRIMA’, the first step in automated finishing equipment.
Roberto Bolognini: The ‘PRIMA’ is for us the first step for a customer into automated coating process. So, from the manual spraying we have studied them a machine to be the first step of innovation in automation of a customer that is doing coating manually. What we have done here at AWFS is to give the customers an extra option of automating the process which is loading and unloading automatically which can be done immediately by making the investment of the entire working cell or it can be done by steps so the customers can easily approach the spray machine which is the first need to automate the spraying process and then can be completed on a second stage with the automation of loading and unloading.
 
woodandpaneleurope If you can tell us about the US market for Digital Printing and if you have something new for this continent?
Roberto Bolognini: Well, we are continuing to push in North America our concept of Digital Printing and the embossing with the ‘My Texture’ which we have already seen in LIGNA and we believe is a very interesting solution for all the flooring manufacturers for wood and non wood materials and this is what we are constantly pushing on the market for this type like North American market. Of course, we are open to search for any type of opportunities that can arise into the digital printing so we are talking about stocking, we are talking about digital printing on plastic, metal anything that can come up to an opportunity we are always there working on efficiency, feasibility and study the possibilities to offer eventually to the customers and for sales.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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