With headquarters near Milan, TECNOLAME SRL has become a reference reality in the production of shear blades and tools for customized machines. Vincenzo Di Rosa, managing director of the company, has answered our questions.
With what strategic approach does your company operate in the current market context?
Tecnolame has operated for almost 40 years in Italy and then it is renowned for its quality. Machine manufacturers have been the company’s core activity for a long time, we have always tried to act as a partner rather than as mere supplier and in the last few years we have started approaching also foreign markets, which today account for 30% of the turnover and are further growing.
How is your operational philosophy developed? What targets have you set?
As we have an artisan mentality, we are not able to look for, or to use, shortcuts. In the production of shear blades, for instance, we follow a precise course, which is accomplished through the choice of the material purposely produced for us, the heat treatment and controls: even if this extends times, it will be never changed to the detriment of quality, and this has certainly awarded us with the high ranking we hold in Italy in the production of shear blades. The target is growing further, to be as renowned abroad, too.
What distinguishing characteristics more define your reality?
Certainly, the first I think of are concreteness and the propensity to challenges. Our customers know that, working with us, they can stably rely on a product quality that is constantly of high level, and besides they know when they intend to implement a particular project, they can find in Tecnolame a partner that does its best to reach the target. There is always a lot of passion in all that we manufacture, with the added-value of our collaborators’ great experience.
What requirements do your customers more express and what solutions do you offer as feedback?
In recent years, Italian manufacturers have increasingly specialized in the production of customized machines and we offer our experience to implement that particular detail that can make the difference. It can be the choice of that hardly workable material, which however assures high performances to the tool, or the implementation of special or very long tools. Actually, we can meet many requirements with our machine fleet.
How is your offer composed on its whole and what peculiarities define it?
Tecnolame proposes four product typologies: shear blades, special tools for press brakes, slideways and tooling for folding machines. If we analyse the shear blades we have produced since the establishment of our company, one of their peculiarities is the presence of a tangential grinding adjustment on all plans, with surface roughness of Ra 0.5: this grants perfect parallelisms and longer service life of cutting wire.
What are your latest novelties or the currently outstanding products?
Recently, we are successfully working in the high tonnage ambit, producing tools for big-size press brakes with a concentrated load that can range from 500 to 700 t/m, with lengths that reach even 14 m.
To what extent do your products share in increasing profitability?
In recent years, we have gained great experience in high-strength steel cutting, using steels for highly specialized tools for our shear blades, which grant a bigger number of cuts and the possibility of working sheet metals with even 1400 N/mm2strength.
What services can you provide to customers before and after sale?
In particular, we try to be fast in feedbacks, supporting customers as much as possible at technical level before the sale.
Finally, how do you judge the current market trend and what developments do you hypothesize?
After a big growth culminated in 2018, this year I expect a slight downturn. Then, I do not hope in a two-figure rise but I am confident, due to the unceasing investments made to succeed in improving the result attained last year.
