Ceramiche Mariner starts up its own Smart Factory 4.0

The new Mariner’s factory, which was inaugurated on 16 March, stands out among the recent interesting industrial projects of the Italian ceramic district.

On 16 March Ceramiche Mariner inaugurated its brand-new factory in Roteglia di Castellarano (Reggio Emilia), one of the most interesting new industrial projects to have emerged in the Italian ceramic district in recent years. With an investment of 55 million euro Mariner’s owners Arnaldo and Giulia Catti have created a new state-of-the-art facility, transforming their sales company into a manufacturing operation with an output of 5 million sq.m/year of floor and wall glazed porcelain tiles.

The plant, started up in January, stands out as a fully digitalised and interconnected factory 4.0, thanks to the Prime software platform from System Ceramics, which provides detailed and real-time 3D visual control of the entire production flow (from incoming raw materials through to the finished products in the warehouse) from any computer. All plants and departments are interconnected and share production data, which are used by Prime to generate information on raw materials and energy consumption, production costs, progress of individual batches and warehouse stock levels.

Mariner opted for the most innovative technologies both in terms of production quality and efficiency and in terms of environmental sustainability and energy saving.

The raw materials batching, body grinding, spray drying, pressing and firing departments were all designed with technology from Sacmi, including a spray dryer with a capacity of more than 25 tons/hour, a large continuous modular mill for body grinding, 7 discontinuous mills for glaze grinding, 4 PH7500 presses, 3 horizontal dryers and two latest-generation kilns.

The presses are fed by LB technological towers for spray-dried powder treatment, which are also equipped with dry colouring systems. 

The glazing lines feature TG Mac machines and Rotocolor units from System Ceramics, which also supplied the Creadigit digital decoration lines, the automated loading/unloading equipment, the AGV handling system and the brand-new Multiflex sorting line.

Eco-friendly solutions have been adopted both in the grinding department, equipped with two Top Squadra Dry squaring lines from BMR, and with the installation of a high-efficiency gas turbine cogeneration plant from Cefla which produces 4.5 MW of energy, allowing for the self-sufficiency.

Thanks to an increase in market sales and third-party production, Mariner expects to close the year 2019 with a turnover of 45 million euros, up 66% on 2018 revenues of 27 million euro.

Read the interview with Giulia Catti published on Ceramic World Review 131/2019