Sacmi Imola S.C.

Company overview

SACMI IMOLA, founded in 1919, is the Italian parent company of an international Group that is the world-leading designer, builder and marketer of machines and complete plants for the ceramic, plastic, beverage & packaging and food processing industries.

The SACMI Group, consisting of over 70 companies, has achieved international leadership thanks to the development and application of innovative new technologies, secure positioning on world markets and constant research to enhance product quality and improve customer service. It has production plants and support companies in 24 countries.

Thousands of Sacmi machines are in use all over the world and exports account for around 85% of total business. The hub of Sacmi’s overall strategy is its Global Network: a group of companies located on different continents, within their outlet markets, capable of supplying customers with a fast, efficient assistance service – a must for all leading international enterprises.

That service network also provides Sacmi customers with on-line spare parts ordering and special Internet access to personalised technical documentation.

Technology and design

Sacmi provides integrated stretch-blow moulding, filing and labelling solutions. Individual machine excellence is accompanied by outstanding product and plant engineering skills, allowing efficient high-performance production flows from raw materials to finished product storage.

There was a time, in the old-style beverage industry, when the focus was on the individual machine, when questions such as efficiency, productivity and energy savings were seen as secondary, - if they were seen at all. Then, starting in the year 2000, the market began to undergo a far-reaching transformation, becoming more dynamic and experiencing fast growth rates that are still in double figures in some emerging economies: yet the focus was no longer mainly or only on individual machines but, rather, on the development of integrated ‘turnkey’ solutions that span from raw materials to the finished product.

That means product development (good design included), production plant planning, and the provision of handling systems, which can account for up to 50% of costs. Then comes design and production of the caps, design and production of the caps, specific to the type of bottle being developed. It is in providing this integrated process that Sacmi has, in recent years, demonstrated unsurpassed expertise by developing truly cutting-edge solutions.

While individual machines remain the ‘stars’ of the plant, they are now inserted within an overall ‘bottle analysis and optimisation’ strategy that allows Sacmi to give – in a way that very few companies in the industry can– beverage firms a ‘sole provider’ service. That means both product design and plant layout (in which pride of place goes to the patented labellers of the RFST series): Roll Fed Sleeve Technology is, in fact, a system that allows the label to be sealed directly on the bottle from a roll of film, enhancing efficiency and providing significant energy savings. Then there are Sacmi’s filling machines, featuring exclusive patented SOLO-MAS technology that allows the dozens of filler valves to be managed via a single flow meter controlling a master valve: these would normally be controlled by as many dedicated flow meters. The quantity of bottled liquid is thus controlled by just one flow meter, which calculates the required time and recalculates at every cycle, thus ensuring machine management savings (thanks to the absence of other flow meters) totalling several thousand Euros.

Double cavity, double speed: this, then, is the distinguishing feature of the SBF blowers, the other undisputed protagonists of the ‘system’: an acronym for Stretch Blow Forming, Sacmi-developed SBF technology allows two bottles (of 1 litre or less) to be produced at a time, with proportional productivity gains. This ‘turnkey’ package provided by Sacmi to the beverage industry, comes complete with finished product control and handling systems, from palletizers with laser-guided vehicles (LGV) that allow fully automated end-of-line line management all the way to the warehouse.

Compared to companies that offer the market individual plant solutions or individual machines, Sacmi’s distinguishing feature is conscientious, synergic engineering of product and plant. This approach is also highlighted by the integration of bottle production and filling solutions with cap production technology, where Sacmi leads the way with the CCM (Continuous Compression Moulding) series: from the first models to the latest technological gem, the CCM48SB, that Sacmi’s engineers have optimised through ‘lean technology’, thanks to which the already excellent performance of the previous CCM series has been boosted considerably; this latest model also improves energy-consuming performance, which is as much an achievement as the cap production cycle times of less than 2 seconds.