ISAVAL-DROMONT, A PARTNERSHIP THAT HAS SPANNED 18 YEARS

For a remarkable 18 years, this collaboration has contributed to the success of both parties, leading to significant benefits and consistent growth.

We are thrilled to share with you the story of this extraordinary partnership with Pinturas Isaval, exploring the secrets of their success, the challenges faced along the way, and the strategies that have made this collaboration so enduring.

Join us as we delve into the heart of this business success story and discover how a strong alliance can be a driving force for growth and innovation in the business world.

Thanks to the work of our company’s founders, and then to an aggressive expansion strategy throughout the Spanish territory, we built a prestigious reputation as a professional and reliable brand. But, we were unable to sustain the planned growth in our existing plant. Some of the key objectives for this investment included achieving maximum color production capacity for water-based paints (especially for facades) while also decreasing costs of traditional manufacturing, minimizing stock and residual waste, ensuring repeatability and a guaranteed delivery time of 24 hours. “Making the impossible, possible.”

Since this was the most complex and important area of consideration, we postponed making a decision while we progressed with the construction of our new plant.

The land, building work, relocation of the facilities, and the purchase of new, conventional machinery, were all devouring our budget. It was at this moment that we visited Dromont, and we met a business family like our own.

A founding father, the great Mr. Claudio Drocco, with his formidable presence and manor, the same age as our parents and just as active and enthusiastic as our founders. Supported by his sons, brothers from our own generation.

We suddenly found what we were looking for, solutions to our fears, realities that we could see and touch in the factory itself, meticulous design, perfect stainless-steel finishes, and above all, the ability to make decisions on the go. In just 48 hours we designed our plant, negotiated, and closed the deal.

The decision-making power was at that table, and we knew that we would be in good company.

The decision to select Dromont is based on a long-standing and collaborative relationship that has spanned 18 years. The values found in Dromont in 2005 at the time of signing our first fully automated water-based In-can dosing installation, still live on today.

At that time, we were about to undertake our most important industrial and technological investment in our 55-year history, the relocation of the factory to our brand-new facilities in Ribarroja Del Turia.

We were then the second generation of descendants, all under 40 years of age, with a management team trained in the company almost from its very origins, or recently hired young professionals with little experience, eager to make a step change in the Spanish market.

As we like to say in our joint meetings, Dromont-Isaval is now a partnership of mutual interests. We are true partners and friends, despite having no financial/commercial relationship.

Pinturas Isaval continues to be a tremendously professional family owned businesses, maintaining close relationships with our clients, and aspiring to lead our respective markets.

With their maintenance and assistance programs Dromont Group have been a constant presence at our side, and we have continued to demonstrate our confidence in their products with the purchase of 100 Prima store machines and 5 integral color installations in the plant: the previously mentioned initial installation of 2005, a solvent color plant in 2010, the second water plant in 2015, and the last two acquisitions, the second solvent plant in 2022 and the aggregate plant in 2022, as well as countless improvements and small extensions, both in hardware and software.

With Dromont, we have made five major investments, always facing the same challenges. An exponential increase in our service capacity was required. In an environment dominated by large multinationals on the one hand, with their impressive product development, marketing and channel control capabilities, yet long delivery times, and on the other hand by small local brands, boasting agile service thanks to their proximity to the sales territory, we have always been clear that we had to maintain the responsiveness of the local business and acquire the capabilities of the multinational. A professional brand like ours knows that a fast response time translates directly into profit in our bottom line and is a differentiating factor that is difficult to match without technological resources like those provided by Dromont. In addition, doing this at a competitive price and not higher than that of full-batch color production. Our 25-year experience in the development and manufacture of our own dye systems, added to Dromont’s ability to dose quickly and accurately, without the need for human intervention, enables us to market our products at the same price as those produced using traditional technology.
Reduction in environmental impact provides the dual benefit of contributing to the reduction of our carbon footprint whilst improving costs through the complete elimination of cleaning and sludge treatment processes.
Income balance improvement was accomplished by eliminating finished-colour stock along with the implicated financial costs and risk of carrying obsolete stock.
An exponential increase in our product offering in color service was achieved for our own or personalized collections. The different Dromont plants have allowed us to offer the Spanish market what is probably the most complete range of finishes, both in water-based and solvent paints. Since 2022, with the addition of the aggregate plant, we have also been able to provide any type of finish in any colour, as we no longer need to make-to-stock or use pre-packaged non-pigmented bases.

Today we categorize our main challenges into three main areas, in each of which we count on the collaboration of Dromont technology including the consolidation of our national distribution channel, with the strengthening of our main specialized distributors and the expansion our own network of retail stores. This channel is dedicated to the professional customer who demands service, maximum performance from their products, and competitive pricing. Professionals know that the factory, with its industrial capabilities, responds quickly and can adjust orders to the maximum. This means that when they need additional products or to carry out touch-ups, the response time is fast and repetition is accurate. Additionally, our brand’s main distribution centers are equipped with Prima simultaneous high precision dosing systems, which are highly efficient and use the same colorants as our manufacturing plant, all developed and produced by Isaval.
The development of our international markets was also an opportunity for us. We are presently in around twenty countries, with our own subsidiaries in five of them. All of them rely on Dromont technology for the manufacture of their colors and the development of products that accompany the growth of sustainable construction, specifically our development of External Thermal Insulation Composite Systems (ETICS). Our brand Rhonatherm leads the Spanish market in terms of installed meters among paint manufacturers, with over 300,000 m2 per year and an expected average annual growth of over 30%. The latest investment, developed jointly with Dromont, has allowed us to extend our Just-In-Time technology with the incorporation of aggregates into the final layer. Now, starting from an empty container, we can achieve a finished, colored, and precisely proportioned thick-layer acrylic in an average of 45 seconds. And all of this while retaining the principles of cost, repeatability, sustainability, and productivity.

Aside from the areas that I have already mentioned, we are concerned about how to meet the demand for online business from the B2C DIY market. We aim to offer a wide range of products, in formats of up to 5 liters, with maximum precision and the ability to deliver the product anywhere in the market within just 24 hours, without having to rely on human factors. Dromont has already implemented solutions in this field, which we are observing with great interest.

If we focus on the latest installation for thick-layer product finishes, there have been several improvements. We have transitioned from using two different production methods:
1. Complete batch, with aggregate and color added for whites and large batches. This provides us with production capacity but increases our environmental footprint, raises our average stock levels, and makes color continuity challenging for smaller new batches (end of project or touch-up).
2. Use of pre-filling with final color dosing in the DROMONT SELECTA automatic water-based paint installation. This gave us flexibility and repeatability for small batches but overloaded an already heavily used line, complicated the cleaning processes of the agitators, and due to the need to introduce pre-dosed aggregates and the handling of refills, increased the need for manual labor.

In addition the pre-fillings limited the final range and quality of the finishes at the risk of exponentially increasing stocks. With the new plant:
• We are able to manufacture white paint if there is idle capacity in the color plant. This increases the manufacturing capacity of our dispersers for other uses.
• We can double the production capacity of the dispersers by eliminating the need to add premixed aggregates. Manufacturing the base without aggregates is faster and cleaner.
• We´ve reverted to empty packaging from source, thus reducing environmental impact.
• We provide a 24-hour response time to 100% of our ETICS projects, as we can sequentially serve the same building project multiple times without additional cost.
• We no longer handle aggregates in the plant as the process is fully automated in the 6 silos thanks to the Dromont dosing system.
• We have been able to expand our entire range of finishes to all types of thick-layer paints without the need to significantly increase the inventory or stock levels.
In summary, we have increased our service capacity by 300%, ensuring that the plant does not become a bottleneck for the continuous growth of our ETICS product line.