Qualicer: February 10-13 in Castellon

The day after the close of Cevisama, the spotlight in Castellón (Spain) will turn to Qualicer, the international conference on ceramic tile quality, to be held from 10 to 13 February 2008. Now in its 10th edition, this year’s event will focus chiefly on the use of ceramic in eco-sustainable building, because in recent years, Qualicer has extended its range of action – like the ceramic industry itself – to fields such as architecture, urban design, marketing, sales and business management.

The speakers invited by the event’s organisers (the Castellón Chamber of Commerce and the Valencia provincial register of engineers) include Arturo Mastelli, a well-known consultant to the ceramic industry, who will deliver a paper on the subject of “Green materials for green architecture”.
Other much awaited papers will be delivered by Mila Payà, Head of the New Trends Department of the Design and Architecture Area of ITC-Alicer, and José Castellano, Director of Decorative Ceramic, on “Innovation, design, technology and marketing”; by Scott Carothers, Executive Director of the Ceramic Tile Education Foundation, and Bart Bettiga, Executive Director of the NTCA, on the challenges offered by the “US market and beyond”; and by Javier Portolés, Head of R&D Projects at Tau Ceramica, who will talk about “Ceramic and the built environment: a potential opportunity for ceramic companies”.

In addition to these important conferences, the technical committee, made up of 63 experts from the industry, plus technicians and academics from Spain and elsewhere, have selected a total of 163 papers, which will be presented in various forms during the four-day event in Castellón.

The papers and conferences scheduled for Qualicer 2008 will be divided, as usual, into three macro families: ceramic manufacturers and markets (corporate management, strategic policy, offshoring of production, business ethics and competitiveness), ceramic tiles and the construction industry (specific uses, installation and maintenance, ventilated walls, special applications, quality controls, architecture and interior design), and manufacturing and the environment (plant, factories, industrial processes, production and quality management, control of polluting emissions and energy saving).

The 2006 edition of the event involved 600 professionals from 29 countries.