Duravit

Over 200 years of heritage in the name of «functional design», outstanding product quality and environmental friendliness.

It all began back in 1817, when Georg Friedrich Horn founded an earthenware factory in Hornberg, in the Black Forest, a business that later focused on pots and jugs. Yet it was the subsequent expansion into ceramic sanitaryware manufacturing that laid the foundations for future success.
Today, Duravit AG is an international group with 11 production plants in Germany, Egypt, China, France, India, Tunisia and Turkey, and over 7,000 employees. All over the globe, the Duravit brand is renowned for its high quality designer ceramic sanitaryware and its meticulous attention to staff training and new technologies.
The Duravit brand offers the guarantee of tradition-based ‘handmade’ quality, plus close, respectful ties with the communities where the company operates. It also focuses on technological innovation as a vital tool for achieving those brand values. Hence the decision to partner up with SACMI on key investment and development projects across Europe and beyond.

Quality & Responsibility

“Deep roots that have been nurtured over time is a key Duravit strength”, writes the company. In other words, the key to excellence is respect for tradition and the environment, and taking a craftsmanship approach to sanitaryware production. A quality, responsibility-based policy that Duravit applies to all its international branches by taking full advantage of a long-standing partnership with SACMI. Firing is a crucial stage of sanitaryware production as it has a huge impact on both consumption and finished product quality. That’s why Duravit uses latest-generation SACMI-Riedhammer kilns. Since the 2000s several machines - such as tunnel and shuttle kilns - have been supplied, for example, to Duravit facilities in China, Tunisia and Egypt.

The hallmarks of this generation of machines include efficient management of diversified production mixes and features - such as innovative linings - that improve durability and reliability. Moreover, all latest-generation Riedhammer machines are equipped with advanced energy recovery systems (EMS platform, energy management system), ensuring even greater consumption savings per unit of fired product.

«Design is never just design»

This concept lies at the core of the Duravit brand’s international reputation: design is the flip side of functionality, quality a goal to be pursued uncompromisingly but with the utmost respect for people and the environment.
That’s why Duravit has gone for SACMI high pressure casting technology, selecting the AVI Concept for its plant in Hornberg, Germany. This casting solution offers unmatched productivity, a fast mould changeover system, low maintenance requirements and is compatible with existing moulds.

The first AVI was installed at Hornberg in 2016, alongside the previous AVMs. The latest model has numerous advantages: a machine cycle of less than 20 minutes, a mould fully controlled by an anthropomorphic robot, cutting-edge features that are driving SACMI solutions in the direction of RobotCasting, robot stations designed to eliminate manual work, plus all the benefits of excellent product quality and efficiency.
This is just the first step in a broad investment plan that has, over the years, seen the same AVIs installed at Duravit China (alongside ALS units for the production of water tanks) and in the French branch of Duravit in the Alsace region. Note also that a SACMI ADI - the industry standard-setter for the manufacture of large washbasins and consoles - was installed at the main Hornberg plant as early as 2017.

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Automation and control, robotic handling

Prospectively the world’s leading economy, but above all a vast market grappling with the challenges and contradictions of modernity, China has seen the Duravit-SACMI partnership play a key role in the construction and start-up of the production facility in Chongqing. Inside this futuristic factory, SACMI-developed solutions are taking the plant towards full automation.
So it’s hardly surprising that, out of all the Duravit Group branches, the new unit in Chongqing was at the forefront of the digital revolution that led the world’s major sanitaryware producers (and, today, virtually every company in the industry) to introduce robotic handling technology.

One of the most modern, well equipped plants in all China, Chongqing installed SACMI laser-guided handling systems in 2017, just a year after its inauguration. In practice, pieces are no longer stored or moved manually: they’re conveyed on the new LGVs (laser guided vehicles), including piece loading/unloading on glazing lines.
This is just one aspect of an all-round partnership that has seen the Chinese production unit take delivery of robotic glazing lines and, once again, Riedhammer kilns.

RobotGlaze, quality and repeatability, minimum glaze consumption

Through its Gaiotto brand, SACMI develops state-of-the-art robotic sanitaryware glazing solutions that are sold worldwide. Here, the robot has a dual function: to guarantee excellent repeatability, quality and uniformity of application to maximise the aesthetics of the final product, yet also to streamline the introduction of technologies that limit environmental impact and safeguard worker health.
Over the years, SACMI-Gaiotto glazing units have been supplied to Duravit Egypt, Duravit China and Duravit France. They’re designed to combine cutting-edge robot performance (e.g. self-learning and offline programming of glazing recipes) with the ability to integrate the glaze recovery and water filtration systems that eliminate process waste.
The result? Profitable sustainability, good for the environment yet also great for quality and lower running costs.

Efficiency and «total tracking»

From ‘product idea’ to the best technology to put that idea into practice, with a sharp focus on the highest quality and efficiency at every stage of production: this approach has seen the SACMI-Duravit Group partnership go from strength to strength over the years.
Moreover, it’s a philosophy that extends beyond the individual machines to control of the complete plant, including the body preparation and drying stages that are equally crucial to finished product quality.
Here too, Duravit has a precious ally capable of supplying new digital technologies that allow total product traceability and, therefore, more effective and efficient production flow management from customer orders onwards.

For example, a new system, developed with SACMI and recently installed at the Hornberg plant, applies a QR code to each transiting piece: a further step towards optimization of order management, quality, logistics and the efficiency of internal processes.