Ficep has worked with Contiga AS for over two decades, including the manufacture and supply of its first saw drill line, and recently supplying its fully automated saw, drill/coping system which was installed amidst tight covid lockdown restrictions at its Roverud facility.
The new system consists of the Ficep Orient, which is a CNC-controlled drilling and combined Thermal Coping line equipped with rotary single-spindle. To prove the time and cost savings of the system and process, Ficep prepared time studies which presented clear indications of the time saving achievable with the machinery investment.
Owned by Heidelberg Cement, Contiga AS is a leading supplier of complete prefabricated products in steel and concrete for the Norwegian and Nordic countries construction market. The firm employs over 500 staff across 11 production facilities in Norway. Contiga AS designs and develops steel solutions that are tailored to individual projects, delivering between 7-8,000 tons of steel structures to the Norwegian market per year.
Mark Jones, Ficep UK MD, said: “Contiga AS has been a long-standing customer of ours for over 20 years and during that time we have built a solid working relationship which meant that, despite them inviting other suppliers to offer up solutions, we were able to present a more economical and efficient solution that met their exacting needs.
“We overcame several challenges, not least that the machinery was installed during a period of Covid restrictions, but also that the space was limited, and it was important that there was minimum disruption to reduce operational downtime. There were also added contractual obstacles to overcome due to Contiga AS now being part of the huge Heidelberg Cement group and additional levels of communication across several countries were required.”
Thor Egil Einarsrud, factory manager at Contiga at Roverud says: “We use modern technology and work processes, as well as the best machines, to guarantee that all our steel products have high quality. To ensure our competitiveness, automation is absolutely necessary, and we are already seeing that in several of our production processes we save as much as up to 50% in time spent on the new automated sawing plant compared to when we did things manually.
“We have a strong focus on the environment and so it was of huge importance for us to minimise the impact on the environment when installing our new saw plant. We did this through the reuse of large parts of the existing conveyor belt which fits together well with the new system as they are all Ficep products.
"This versatile technology allows various operations normally only available through multi-spindle drilling lines. The new plant has transformed our business, now allowing better efficiency and precision.”
