Often, old heavy clay plants have the potential to be profitable investments through improving and upgrading to produce valuable products for the market. SABO has recently completed such a renovation at an existing plant in Moldova, on behalf of Ergobrix.
This was the second stage of a phased investment that aimed mainly at both a capacity and a quality upgrade. The first phase was completed three years ago and involved important interventions in clay grinding, extrusion, cutting and regulation. At that time also new products were introduced aiming at product differentiation in the market
Recently the second stage was completed. This involved the putting in operation of an old idle dryer at a new second shift, its critical connection to the old cutting line and a setting machine serving both lines. The idea was to make the key additions to connect the two dryers by utilizing most of the existing machinery.
For this reason, robots have been used to connect the two lines, which are ideal for such cases to create flexible, functional solutions that are efficient in space utilization. The specific solution was developed through identifying the specific areas and equipment that were creating downtimes and limiting plant capacity. At this prioritization, the input and close cooperation with the customer and the people of the factory was critical.
The upgrade also included visualization of dryer parameters that are important for its regulation and a setting machine designed to automatically load the kiln car in way that the firing process was not affected.