TPT March 2020

I NDUS T RY

CONTRAST: from father to daughter and by its customer’s side for more than 25 years

frequency welders, CONTRAST has become an important point of reference in the Tube Industry. This is because of its ability to rapidly supply customers in Italy and abroad with high quality products such as ferrites, epoxyglass tubes, impeders, copper inductors as well as products for inside and outside tube’s scarfing, HSS saw blades, friction circular saw blades, capacitors and triode valves. CONTRAST is also valued for its ability to assist, advise and support its customers in the strategic choices necessary to obtain the best production results.

CONTRAST was founded in 1994 by Carlo Icardi and specialises in selling high quality consumables for the tube industry. The company was the natural evolution of Carlo’s thirty years of experience as a highly specialised technician in the high frequency welding of tubes. His daughter Cristina, who he trained and shared experience with, decided to follow in his footsteps; not an obvious choice in the early 1990s in what was still a heavily male dominated market. This was a strong sign of trust for a young woman starting off her new career in the field of steel tube production. After 25 years that choice has proved to be a successful one. Carlo Icardi unfortunately died suddenly in 2014 and Cristina took over at

Cristina Icardi of CONTRAST

CONTRAST following in her father’s footsteps. Thanks to her constant and direct care for the company and the many collaborations with Europe’s main producers of consumables and relationships with some of Italy’s most important builders of tube mills and high

CONTRAST Di Icardi Cristina www.contrastsale.com

Kjellberg Finsterwalde wins innovation award MANUFACTURING group Kjellberg Finsterwalde has won an innovation award for its plasma cutting system “Q”. The award was announced at Blechexpo, the international trade fair for sheet metal working and Kjellberg Finsterwalde won the separation technology category, which is part of the “Award for Blechexpo”. special, because our development team was facing a completely new challenge with the digitisation topic that had to be mastered,” said the Kjellberg development manager Volker Krink.

Kjellberg Finsterwalde has invested several million euros and years of research in the latest generation of the plasma power source and the new Industry 4.0-compatible inverter power source “Q” combines precision plasma cutting at an “exceptional level” with the complex requirements of digitised production. In the future, systems will be able to communicate between all stages of the value chain in a smart factory. The real-time communication between the plant components and the process data exchange of networked machines were two of the innovations that visitors were able to experience at the trade fair via a live broadcast from the Competence Centre Plasma 4.0 from Kjellberg’s headquarters in Finsterwalde directly to Blechexpo which was held in Stuttgart, Germany. Using the browser-based Q-Desk operator interface visitors were able to take a look at information such as FAQs or video tutorials directly on site as well.

“It is a very special moment when a product, whose development one has accompanied for years, is appreciated in this way. This prize is also something

Kjellberg Finsterwalde’s new motto “Always on”, which has been supported by its large-scale social media campaign has also influenced its next steps as the company is now heavily focusing on the topic of networking. In the future the Kjellberg group aims to make their know-how even more tangible both online as well as at trade fairs.

Kjellberg Finsterwalde www.kjellberg.de

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MARCH 2020