The Del Conca Group's new grinding philosophy

When in 2012-2013 Del Conca Group began to study the layout of its new factory in the United States, it realised that this would also be the perfect opportunity to upgrade the raw materials grinding process adopted at its production facilities in Italy. This meant abandoning the traditional continuous grinding procedure and converting to the more modern process of continuous modular grinding.

After conducting a comparative study of the two approaches, the company decided to opt for the new process. The facility in Loudon, Tennessee that began operation in February 2014 was consequently equipped with an MMC 74 continuous modular mill sized for an annual production of 3 million sq.m of porcelain tiles.

Quality, flexibility and savings goals that Del Conca Group achieved as soon as the plant was started up and which led the group to adopt the new grinding philosophy for all subsequent plant interventions at its various factories.

For expansion of the Tennessee plant, commissioned in December 2016, the group installed a second two-module MMC 74 mill identical to the existing machine with the option of adding a third module.

The new Pastorelli plants

Concurrently with the expansion of the US facility, the Del Conca Group launched another major investment (35 million euros) in Italy, entirely concentrated at the Pastorelli facility in Savignano sul Panaro (Modena).

The project was finalised between April and June 2016 and consists of two new production lines, one with traditional technology for large size tile production and the other based on Continua+ technology for the production of ceramic panels.

Both lines will begin production in March-April 2017, raising the facility’s production capacity from 17,000 to 30,000 sq.m/day. When designing the layout of the raw materials preparation department, it was decided to maintain the existing single-chamber MTC 140 continuous mill, while the four old discontinuous mills were dismantled and replaced with a single MMC 74 continuous modular mill

• Read the complete article realized with Luca Costi, Technical Director of Del Conca Group