Innovation is our past, present and future
Expanding far beyond its Italian roots, the Dromont Group has become a truly international and endlessly innovative company.
Approaching the 50 years of Comec foundation, the company is investing for a new expansion of its Canossa facility (between Parma and Reggio Emilia), including a larger production area, the new ATEX laboratories for solvent and water borne tests, an empowered Engineering Team. with ambitious R&D targets, as well as a new canteen with recreation areas and wider office space with a “green touch” including vertical gardens and trees.The business has reached new heights with export based sales accounting for over 90% of the total production. Comec celebrates its 50 years of drawing inspiration by red passion logo. Red as the color of the heartbeat and soul.
“Dromont has always had a central role in my family”, Luca Drocco,Group CEO, begins. “Within the span of a single generation, my father skillfully created a company that is a global leader: he set new standards in the coating in-plant dispensing and in-store tinting sector. That has been my background ever since I was a student, it is my DNA.”
Our company has always been known as the vanguard of paint, ink and coating machines, launching premium innovation concepts like Selecta, Prima, Optima, and Micro models (for the Dromont’s dispensing range), and Kynesis, Kynepilot and Dual Force machines (for the Comec’s dispersing & milling range).
“We foster an entrepreneurial culture throughout the organization”- Luca explains. “We share our vision with others on every level,bringing innovation to the way we work, not just to the products,with a continuous search for excellence as we help our customers remain competitive. Embracing internationalism since the early nineties has been crucial for the company, while staying true to the Italian mindset of excellence and at same time carefully including the cultural standards and norms of the local market globally. Viewing products and needs from an international perspective opens our minds and antennas to the future. That is what we need in order to anticipate customer demand, allowing seemingly distant markets to influence one another, and approaching new but close sectors to coating and adhesives, like pharma and cosmetics.”
“Tailored products and highly personalized engineering to suit even the most demanding needs of automation and logistics are at the core of the company. An experienced team of Sales-Engineers, who have deep knowledge of the industries we service and understand how best to customize the machines for specific workplaces, is a strategic part of our personalization process.Concept Engineering is an added value to feasibility studies,helping customer’s management extracting the financial and technical return on the investment and in the whole production and distribution cycle. Moreover we have an extensive catalogue of proprietary technology we have developed in-house and a seamless integration of mechanical, chemical process, electronic and software elements. Our customers are the real protagonists of the experimental phase: their demands provide us with new technical and design challenges that help us update and continuously improve our systems.
Excellence was, is and will remain at the core of our activities, and it is embedded in the group DNA. Our innovations bring new standards of technology to the industry – some significant new projects are displayed in this Magazine – and we will continue to invest around four percent of our yearly revenues in research and development including 4.0 Industry Automation, Internet of Things, cloud computing and real-time information sharing, all incorporated into our models. Raising the bar in technological and digital transformation: recent developments incorporate smart devices to run any activity and planning operation also in remote mode, enabling end users to wirelessly control and predict/anticipate issues and identify solutions.
Our bespoke Preventive Maintenance Program involves a network of over 800 customers worldwide and takes proactive steps before a problem manifests. We are working on a App to develop a powerful tool accessible to end users to avoid the hassle of downtimes and access to replacement parts faster”.
Embracing the new technologies is the central part of his vision.“We believe in digital factories able to trace and identify every product, enabling automatic feedback and process statistics. In our recent Australian, California and UK Inplant projects, iBSM (inBatch Shuttle Manufacturing) and Incan Lines, we are already moving from mass production to mass personalization. This shifts has altered our business model from simply “producing machines”towards a more holistic forward-looking approach.” Nevertheless there is no complacency as the company moves ahead and Luca insists it will continue to pursue a lean structure ensuring everybody is motivated and process flows are streamlined, scheduled and in line with market requests.
“We are still eager to grow in a balanced way – both organically and by acquisitions – and we are investing with renewed passion in our younger talented members as our strength to ensure future growth in the company cultural and business principles.”