Alfa Laval has opened a new greenfield manufacturing site in San Bonifacio, Italy, for the production of brazed heat exchangers.
The new highly advanced facility includes research and customer training areas and will mainly supply heat exchangers to customers in Europe.
The 31,000 m2 site is Alfa Laval's most modern and sustainable production facility yet, with rooftop solar panels supplying energy.
It has a digitalized warehouse management system to oversee the flow of materials and goods, an advanced automated production set-up, an on-site training centre – and a lab for the research and development of new innovative products for heat pumping, air conditioning and refrigeration.
President of the company’s operations division, Mikael Tydén, said the production area and logistics is 13,400 m2in size while the office and laboratory area occupies 6,000 m2
"The new facility marks an important milestone in our strategy to move towards Industry 4.0 and make manufacturing both smarter and more efficient, across the whole production line," he said.
Tydén said Alfa Laval’s 4.0 strategy includes the integration of smart digital technology and manufacturing – with an emphasis on automation, machine learning and real-time data to take production to the next level.
“With this state-of-the-art facility we are better equipped to meet our customers' needs, and together with them we will drive the development of tomorrow's product range,” he said.
Alfa Laval's innovative technologies are dedicated to purifying, refining, and reusing materials, promoting more responsible use of natural resources.
The company has 16,700 employees and is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm.