Reinventing oneself is feasible and worthwhile

Packaging-, bundling and bagging machines... Automated systems and lines for packaging, distributing and handling food and non-food products. This is Sitma today: a capital of skills to be preserved, but company always on the lookout for new suggestions. Target: grow, diversify. L.G.

A story constantly in the making, that of Sitma, the Spilamberto (MO) based company that features among the veterans of Packaging Valley, which over the years has shown a constant ability to intelligently remodel its image and its offer to enable the company to discover - and cover - new market segments.
Over 80 registered patents, 8 thousand machines installed in 70 countries from 1965 to today, three foreign offices - in France, the United States and Japan – over 80% exports: sizeable figures, obtained with the awareness of those who know they have a solid entrepreneurial and industrial history behind them.
And as explained by Gianluca Rossi, Sitma’s commercial director, whom we met at Ipack-Ima, a combination of factors lie at the basis of the company’s success.
«Above all, the ability of the ownership, which has managed to implement an effective process of delegation, involving a young and determined management in the running of the company. Secondly, a creative and versatile approach to technological development, which considers the demands of production efficiency, waste reduction and energy savings expressed by users. Last but not least - underlines Rossi - the passion and skills of those who work there, committed to having the company grow on an ethical level, with a view to social and environmental sustainability».

Sitma 8002
The new frozen pizza and bakery packaging machine, presented at Ipack-Ima 2018.

Aiming at the new
At present the company’s activities are organized on the basis of what Rossi defines as “four pillars”: General Packaging, Post-press, E-logistics, DM & Transpromo.
«A subdivision of application areas, where specific design competences merge, united by a collective effort in Research & Development. In fact, Sitma continues to find reasons for innovation both in the more traditional businesses (ie bagging online and offline, along with systems to render the unaddressed or personalised mailing services more functional as well as the supply of end-of-line machines in the publishing and graphic arts sectors. Ed.), both in the two “younger” sectors, that though show great potential, ie the production of modular systems for packaging food and other products in film and intralogistics, to which we provide ad hoc sorting, particularly for e-commerce. We could also say that, in these latter cases, we have almost pin-pointed a niche market that we now effectively preside over, proposing high automation solutions».
An example of this is the recent contract obtained by Sitma which, in partnership with the French company Viapost (La Poste’s logistics branch), features the development of a sorter for sorting parcels and small irregular packs mainly from the international world of e-commerce.
«This is a complex system, consisting of conveyors, weighing systems and OCR for reading and checking addresses, even handwritten. After the excellent results achieved with the pilot project, we have signed an important framework agreement which provides for the exclusive supply of several plants, which we will install over the next three years in France».

EASY SORT
Sitma Sorter designed for postal logistics, available in two versions (one dedicated to sorting parcels, the other to sorting small irregular parcels from e-commerce traffic).

Redevising packaging
As we said, even in their more traditional core business environment, Sitma continues to put forward alternative proposals, which testify both to the degree of technological flexibility of the company and the marked attention to environmental issues expressed in several market sectors.
Hence for example, the consolidated solutions for packaging with film have recently been joined by bagging systems capable of handling large formats: analogous on a functional level, fast and with excellent performances, they are in response to those who aim to offer a more sustainable image of themselves, even when it comes to door-to-door delivery of advertising flyers, «a consolidated trend in Northern Europe and already regulated by laws that “banish” plastic in these applications. If we then consider other factors - says Rossi - such as the ability to personalize the paper envelope by means of a direct inkjet printing, or the jacket or the banderol, that actually makes the use of labels superfluous, we are sure that the trend will inevitably take hold in Italy as well, given the relatively low cost of the upgrade of the packaging systems».

New ideas for food 
Recently under the spotlight at Ipack-Ima, Sitma 8002 was presented as the food grade packaging machine able to revolutionize the packaging standards of pizzas and frozen bakery products (extensively tackled in the June 2018 issue of ItaliaImballaggio, Ed.). A peculiar feature of this wrapper is, first of all, the possibility to package the product directly inside a special multilayer film - thus eliminating the cardboard case - thanks to a particular air welder. We also cite the possibility of side welding, which keeps the faces of the package clean and easy to read, in favor of a better brand communication, as well as the overall reduction of the weight and volume of the packaging.