Putting people at the centre

For Salvamac, which recently celebrated its birthday, it is time to make an assessment of a long and intense industrial history and, said co-founder Christian Salvador, all the indicators are confirming the validity of the strategies adopted to cope with the economic and structural changes that have occurred in many markets.

“After a record-breaking 2019 and a 2020 that ended with an extraordinary growth, we did not a expect similar experience in 2021,” said Mr Salvador, who founded the woodworking machinery company along with Ziemowit Dolkowski.

“We carried on along the path we had set ourselves, working to consolidate our presence in many markets and to experiment with new opportunities where we are less known,” continued Mr Salvador. “And the results were not lacking, allowing us to close an important three-year period, during which we have accompanied the growth in turnover and the machines produced with a ‘fine-tuning’ of the company organisation.”

Selling more requires producing more and providing more certainties in terms of service, the ability to guarantee continuity and the quality of the relationship with customers and resellers, he added. In Europe, this growth was made possible by the acquisition of new market share, to which was added the consolidation of the company’s presence in the UK. The company has seen some significant results in the UK market in recent years and this year its commitment to a deep-rooted ‘on-site’ presence – has given it an edge, said Mr Salvador.

“Our sector is becoming less and less profitable and, in turn, is asking for more and more investments and an originality that I feel is sometimes missing,” he continued. “Everyone is talking about innovation; originality is a different concept. It means being different not only in the product but also in the ideas, in the way of dealing, in the human aspects. Seeing the business not only as coated steel with a few electronic circuits and some cables, but by placing people ahead of everything, something that is perceived less and less. And, in my opinion, human relationships and ethics will have greater importance than in the past.”

SOLID, SIMPLE, SAFE

The ethical message goes through the details, he went on to say.

“The Salvamac optimising saws, such as the SalvaPush_2000, are in themselves an ethical product, because cutting wood with these machines means saving 5-15% of the raw material. It also makes work easier and safer for the operator. It is only necessary to load and unload or to mark the wood, it reduces the strain on the worker, who can be moved to more skilled tasks.

“Furthermore, the recent evolutions in the entry-level range of the semiautomatic cutting saws combined with the Salvastop_100 device have made it possible to achieve incredible results,” said Mr Salvador.

“We have done our best to make our machines even easier and to make wood optimisation an essential part of the process for quality results and affordability,” said Ziemowit Dolkowski.

“The software that is entirely made in-house for Salvastop_100 will also allow us to offer major developments in the future, constant implementations that favour the best integration of our saws with the upstream and downstream phases. Many producers build machines to which the customer must adapt but with our philosophy, the customers can follow their own way of working and do not have to adapt to the machine.”

AIR & PAINTING DIVISION

Salvamac says it is continually gaining ground in various markets, with an offer that ranges from filters and dust-extraction to systems for painting booths, and which it says includes perfect solutions for companies of different sizes and requirements.

The Salvamac Air & Painting division saw tremendous growth in 2021 with the move to a new, larger building of 2,500m2 on a total area of 5,000m2.

“We have much more space to increase our production and our stock, but we are also investing in new technologies, such as in a new production system that includes a new, very powerful laser cutting machine and a folding line with fully automatic loading and unloading,” said Marco Trasente, head of the division.

Salvamac has also had success with its extraction systems, especially the hi-tech extractors of the SuperDep series. These special filters are designed and manufactured using state-of-the-art technologies. They are versatile filter groups, which take up little space, are suitable for indoor and outdoor use and are extremely functional in extracting dust and wood chips, said the company.

THE NEAR FUTURE

“In over 20 years of experience in this business, I have had incredible satisfaction,” said Mr Salvador. “We strongly believe in human relationships: our customer is not a serial number but a person with a name and needs. They must be satisfied and happy with our machines in order to smile. The people must be at the centre of everything.

“We stand up and assume responsibility for what we do,” he continued. “We have to believe in what we do, and have to combine that pinch of emotion with a great deal of calculation and intelligence.

“Think as if you were a giant multinational but have the necessary agility to move very quickly. Because it’s not always the big fish that are eating the small ones – sometimes the fast ones are eating the slow ones… and in the next few months, we will have incredible news.”