Tecnau and Sitma align

The acquisition of Sitma will boost Tecnau Automation and Packaging. And while this is a new direction for Tecnau, there is a growing interest in end to end automation from book sites producing print on demand and book of one titles which are already using Tecnau technology.

Sitma has been best known for film wrapping and has been the dominant supplier for magazines and mailing applications. In recent years it has diversified into paper wrapping and ecommerce applications, leading into warehouse automation and a growing number of sectors from frozen food, jewellery, cosmetics, electronics and clothing as well as books, magazines and direct mail.

The acquisition will add 120 staff to take Tecnau to a business with 370 employees and sales of more than $100 million. Sitma was founded in 1965 and operates from a factory in Spilamberto close to Modena in northern Italy. This is about three hours from Tecnau’s head office in Ivrea. 

In this country Sitma has worked through Engelmann & Buckham since 1968, one of the longest partnerships in the industry. As well as Sitma, the UK company has developed warehouse automation applications that can include AGV robots and software as well as Sitma for wrapping.

New owner Tecnau is unlikely to impose changes to distribution, in the immediate term at least. 

E&B director Richard MacLean says: “We will continue to trade with Sitma. We have expanded into warehouse automation offering as well as in traditional graphic arts and in the past have been involved with joint projects with Tecnau on automation.”

Eric Keane, chief executive of IFS, says that with increasing interest in high speed inkjet, combined projects are increasingly likely, particularly in areas like book printing, with Sitma products becoming available to Tecnau’s sales channels.

Tecnau CEO Stefano De Marco says that the two companies are already headed in the same direction. “In the last few years Sitma has been able to diversify and apply its technical expertise to the fast growing ecommerce business, developing sustainable, pack to size technological solutions as well as energy saving and low running cost parcel sortation systems. Tecnau endorses this strategy and will provide all the necessary support to retain and expand further the wide customer base in traditional segments and to broaden the portfolio and customer base in new growing areas.

“Tecnau has a growing number of projects in industrial automation which are partly though not necessarily directly related to printing.”

Among these is a vehicle licence plate application where once printed the set of plates is matched and wrapped for the specific customer using Xaar inkjet to identify the license plates inside the wrap. “This is about material being shipped so must come back to digital print at some point,” says De Marco.