Success Stories
 CASE STUDY II: NAŠA SLOGA. DOUBLE PRODUCTION AND INCREASE COMPETITIVENESS WITH LIMITED RESOURCES |
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In 2004, the ceramics plant NAŠA SLOGA in Kovin, Serbia became one of the last in the country to be privatized. Its new owners found themselves with a factory producing far below its potential and high operating costs, which is why they started talking to providers to carry out the necessary tasks to increase production and, in short, make the company competitive.
BERALMAR was chosen as their provider since, in the owners’ words, it offered the lowest investment, the simplest modifications and the most daring objective: to double block production.
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View of the new hot air recovery unit and mixing chamber with air stream.
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New control booth and new kiln preheating
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The starting point consisted of a very old clay preparation line with very low pressure extrusion, a chamber dryer that only used heat recovered from the kiln, and a tunnel kiln with a length of 76 m, an internal width of 4.5 m and a roof in very poor condition. Natural gas was used as a fuel and the maximum production rate was 150 tons/day. The factory operated about 9-10 months per year, as did all of the regional competitors, due to the decrease in demand typical of the harsh Balkan winter.
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Investing in improving the preparation and moulding line was not an option given budget limitations, which is why BERALMAR focused on:
- Changing the kiln roof in the firing zone to increase working pressure.
- Doubling the kiln’s energy contribution by installing 20 high speed, vertical and horizontal gas burner units in the preheating zone, in addition to the old pulse burners already installed.
- Completely modifying the hot air recovery from the kiln to the dryer by incorporating a mixing chamber with a 3,000,000 kcal/h gas burner unit.
- And finally, automating both the firing and drying process through the installation of MICROBER and MICROSEC equipment that control all of the process parameters.
As expected, the limitations of the moulding line under the new production demands created difficulties in the drying process, which delayed implementation tasks. In the end, however, the results exceeded the expectations of the ceramic plant’s technical management, who later admitted to not believing it would be possible to reach a daily production of 300 tons with less than 2% by-product.
If this significant increase in production was an important paradigm shift for the company, things were turned up a notch soon after with the installation of a PROMATIC petcoke-fuelled system for the kiln to replace all the gas pulse burners. This was the first of many PROMATIC systems that BERALMAR would install in the region. Coinciding with a gradual increase in the price of natural gas, the choice of petcoke – a first in the region – increased the ceramic plant’s competitiveness so much so that for two consecutive winters NAŠA SLOGA was the only plant in northern Serbia to not halt production.
Unfortunately, years later the situation for NAŠA SLOGA has changed greatly, for reasons unrelated to operating aspects. Nonetheless, BERALMAR’s intervention in converting a ceramics plant of a certain level of obsolescence into a competitive and profitable business, while respecting budget restrictions, was a huge success for both the technicians who designed it and the owners of NAŠA SLOGA, who believed in BERALMAR’s proposal.
The next case study will be published in Newsletter no. 110 in December 2016.
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Corporate
BERALMAR INDIA COMBUSTION ENGINEERING & EQUIPMENT PVT LTD
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On 4 October the new, and eloquently named, BERALMAR company was inaugurated in Bangalore, India.
The company’s goal is to supply combustion equipment, automation equipment and complete brick manufacturing lines to the Indian subcontinent 100% locally: European technology at local prices.
BERALMAR has been studying the Indian market for almost a decade, participating in fairs, visiting the market, and analyzing how it can contribute to the modernization of the Indian ceramics industry, which, with more than 10 million workers, is the world’s second largest. Given the sector’s characteristics and the technological starting point, BERALMAR has defined a series of machines and production lines specific to the Indian market, which from now on will be able to be supplied locally through the newly founded company.
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Location of Bangalore on the Indian subcontinent.
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The BERALMAR INDIA company headquarters is located in Bangalore, the capital of the state of Karnataka and the third most populous city in the country, with more than 8 million inhabitants. Bangalore is well known as a leading industrial centre in India, especially in the field of information technology. In addition to this role as the Indian Silicon Valley, some European structural ceramics companies have set up shop in the city, including the Austrian multinational WIENERBERGER, with a modern factory with European technology, as well as a European manufacturer of clay preparation and moulding.
We wish BERALMAR INDIA every success!
BERALMAR INDIA C.E.&E. PVT. LTD.
4/11, Bommanahalli Hosur Road, Bangalore, Karnataka, India, 560068
Email: bharath@beralmar.com
Phone: +91 9845174135
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CONCLUSIONS FROM THE ECTS CERAMICS SYMPOSIUM IN ISFAHAN (IRAN)
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On 19 October ECTS held a ceramics symposium in Isfahan (Iran).
Around 100 registered professionals attended the symposium, representing some 60 ceramics plants from across the country, with a large presence of ceramists from Isfahan, who gathered at the Abassi Hotel.
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Xavier Julió giving his presenting.
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Sixteen companies gave speeches on behalf of ECTS. BERALMAR’s speech, given by Xavier Julió, was titled “Proposals to modernize the Iranian ceramics industry” and, as one might expect, it focused on a series of technologies applicable to the specifications of the Iranian ceramics industry and, above all, its clays.
ECTS is to be congratulated for the chosen format of the symposium, which included private meetings between ceramists and speakers that turned out to be very productive. A format in line with current needs: to resume the close relationships that existed between local manufacturers and European providers in the past.
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ECTS 
