“2021 and 2022 were years of recovery, with a very positive trend that supports optimism for 2023, despite many doubts and open issues”, said Marco Morselli, owner of the Bologna-based company specializing in pallet production. “We have survived the health emergency without stopping to work, considering the importance of our product for the distribution of food.
As a result, we were in the forefront in a season of deep change that has disrupted the pallet and packaging industry. Everyone can see that logistics have become essential in everyday life, the handling of goods and materials has evolved, and all of this has an impact on pallets.
At the same time, we see that all companies, independently of their production, want to achieve more and more advanced automation, organize production workflows where the pallet plays a key role as the basic element – in different sizes and “models” – to support materials and items that flow through production lines to become finished products”.
It’s amazing how such a deep transformation depends on a poor product, so to say…
“That’s right: you don’t work on benches anymore, but on production lines that require a supporting element configured to endure the necessary movement and conditions for operators and robots to act as required. The pallet streamlines warehouse management, transport and any other process stage. It’s a trivial, basic product, but demand keeps increasing in a world that needs industrial or shipping supports in thousands of shapes and sizes. Demand seems to be growing indefinitely, and there is a wider an wider range of needs to be met with “tailor-made” pallets, beyond the conventional Europallets that must comply with specific protocols. Each industry has its needs, it requires a suitable pallet for its products, so we must design and manufacture technological solutions that enable our customers to make pallets for ceramics and tiles, a sector that uses different pallets than grocery, stone or wine producers.
The constant challenge of such an articulated demand has resulted into a catalog of machines that can produce all types of pallets; there is virtually nothing we cannot do in this sector”.
Alessandro Scacchetti e Marco Morselli.
We imagine this challenge is not limited to flexibility…
“We are talking about “poor” products, where the margins are narrow and require close attention to every single process phase. Starting from the design of our nailing systems, which are now less energy-hungry, achieving savings up to 70 percent of electric energy requirements, using brushless motors, automatic start-stop systems, and more effective integration between mechanical and pneumatic components. We are talking about machines and lines where the nailing operation lasts few seconds: 80 percent of the cycle time is absorbed by loading, handling and unloading. A machine that automatically “switches off” the unnecessary functions and aggregates ensures significant savings, up to hundreds of kilowatts per day in a line with a capacity of 800 pallets per shift. And the more you produce, the more you save! Such innovation delivers immediate and measurable results, especially today, when energy is more and more valuable…”.
“So, flexibility is a key issue – Morselli added – in a market that has moved from large volumes of identical pallets, manufactured in series, to small batches in different quantities, maybe with several changeovers during the same day, to respond to a market driven by increasingly fluid and ever-changing rules”.
What about your destination markets?
“In recent years, we have been focusing on specific foreign markets, especially France, Spain and Eastern Europe”, said Alessandro Scacchetti, Business developer at Delta for a few years now, and boasting longstanding experience in the wood machinery industry. “We know we have excellent aces to play outside Italy, in mature markets where advanced and reliable technology is in high demand.
We have entered a new phase of our story, a sort of second youth that, based on the success of recent years, represents a major transition to keep looking ahead. It’s not mere change that Delta has invested in the substantial renovation of all communication and marketing tools, from our catalogs to our exhibition booths, including Xylexpo, as well as the new website that we are launching soon. These are not just make-up operations, we have hired new staff in the engineering and purchasing departments”.
“Alessandro has perfectly illustrated the new strategy by Delta”, Marco Morselli said: “We want to expand the category of customers closer to our pallet technology concept, those who appreciate our story, our serious approach, the quality of our machines. We can say that we have decided to show all the trust we have in ourselves, we are no longer satisfied with making good machinery, but we dedicate time and efforts to what’s around the product”.
So, you have a great future ahead…
“We are working to achieve this!”, Marco Morselli concluded. “We have been going through a period of massive investments, especially in Italy, also supported by Industry 4.0 incentives. I believe there were and there are still favorable conditions to bring companies to the next technological level by purchasing new tools, but I am pretty sure the future depends on the capacity to achieve higher and higher competitiveness also through fast technology that can generate quality.
We know well that, in the coming months, we might find ourselves in a different, less “exciting” situation, but pallets – for the reasons we mentioned – will continue to play a key role in the current global economic trend.
And so, we must all be able to look further, find new references, different destination markets to show who we are and what we can do.
We are optimistic, as usual: after all, if we have succeeded to do what we have done during the pandemic, with no industry exhibitions and the restrictions everybody had to face, now it’s all downhill! I really believe that meeting again at exhibitions and restoring a certain dose of “normal” will help us face the impending scenarios without too much worry, and with the determination to do our best for our machines to be appreciated by more and more companies”.
by Luca Rossetti
Hall 24, Stand D01
