sPeCIAL ArABAL - ALUMINIUM-Nachrichten – ALU-WEB.DE

TECHNOLOGY
Turla targets equipment quality and
performance for customer success
Gutmann Group buys Turla new extrusion press – complete with all upstream and downstream equipment
Italian company Turla Srl, for more than
40 years a specialist in building aluminium
extrusion systems, has progressed
to be a world leader in this field. ALU-
MINIUM was most privileged to meet
recently with the company to learn more
about the past, present and future of the
well-known enterprise, together with its
continuing business success in securing
further project contracts.
ALUMINIUM: Turla is well known as a major
world player in extrusion production systems
– but can you outline some of the history and
heritage related to the business that have led
up to your enviable position in the industry?
Turla: Initially founded in 1967 in Brescia,
Lombardy, Northern Italy, the company was
first involved in heavy steel machinery. Subsequently
we began working in the aluminium
extrusion field in 1972, manufacturing
wrapping machines and complete packing
lines for extruded aluminium. The plant progressed
to designing and manufacturing single
machines for the extrusion process, including
pullers and walking beams. Within just a few
years Turla’s product catalogue covered the
entire extrusion production line, from the
billet heating furnace through to the ageing
oven. By the second half of the 1980s Turla
had established a reputation in Europe for the
quality of its products. During the late 1980s
and early 1990s we also progressed to become
one of the major suppliers of handling systems
to Hydro Aluminium, having built some 28
installations for this major organisation, and
in fact, the 29 th is in the pipeline for delivery
to Hydro Nenzing, Austria in 2014.
Today Turla is a well recognised partner
of other major international aluminium extrusion
companies, such as Constellium and
Sapa amongst others. We think that our work
approach over these 40 years has been firmly
supported and improved by the continuous
cooperation with these companies. In fact, we
consider our customers’ production managers,
plant operators and maintenance crew to be
our own engineers. This is because in reality,
it is through several years of cooperation with
these qualified professionals, that we have
been positioned to improve machines year on
year in terms of operation, maintenance and
reliability, all aimed at a short payback period,
Extrusion press entirely pre-installed at Turla facilities
greater productivity and a long service life.
What are your present locations and extent
of operations?
Turla is currently active at its two production
sites and further expansion is currently
underway with a new building – all three are
located in the Brescia region of Northern
Italy. 100% of our products are engineered
and manufactured in-house by experienced
Turla personnel. This also includes all related
hardware and software, designed and manufactured
by our daughter company TF Automation.
Turla site number 2, located in Paderno
Franciacorta, has been in operation since 1996
and hosts the headquarters, together with
engineering activities, sales, administration offices
and manufacturing of handling
systems. With a generous floor
space of over 9,000 square metres,
this facility houses all the work to
build machinery for aluminium extrusion
handling systems, including
all manufacturing stages such as engineering,
welding, machining, assembly and
dry testing.
Turla’s third site was completed in 2008
to provide additional production capacity
and its launch coincided with the start of the
company’s extrusion press manufacturing.
The ground floor of the new facility was purposely
designed to enable building complete
extrusion line installations and including dry
testing. This is a practice we use to start and
test the machines before we ship them to our
customers. This provides a great benefit both
for us and for clients by significantly minimising
the start-up phase at customers’ sites.
The new facility is also home to our daughter
company TF-Automation, which is active
in the production of hardware and software
for our extrusion systems and employs more
than 30 people covering different activities
such as electrical cabinet preparation, electrical
schematics, I/O list engineering, PLC
programming and even customer care. In fact
TF-Automation, through our Teleservice connection
to other Turla installations is able to
monitor our machine parameters 24/7 as well
as adjust and modify working cycles to ensure
optimum performance.
This feature is appreciated by
our customers since technical
parameters can readily
be viewed and possible problems
directly solved without
need to be physically at the
extrusion site.
Could you summarise the company’s overall
philosophy underpinning your success?
Our company policy can be simply summarised
by our motto: Only quality generates
quality. The word ‘Quality’ for us is not
only a mere word to be included in promotion
or certificates. Quality is not related to
machines but solely to professionalism – in
© Turla
62 ALUMINIUM · 9/2013