For three generations already, Bouvet SA is a family-owned and –run corporation which has grown from a one man business into a large corporation with close to 1.000 employees and to € 150 mio turnover. Bouvet purchased its first Aluroller in 2007, and its first Aluroller EVO was installed just a few months ago.
One of the company’s corporate values is to never cease to innovate. Since the 1970’s already, the company started experimenting with the combination of different raw materials to produce end products. Today, this has resulted in a separate business unit: subdivision MINCO focuses exclusively on the production of window profiles, which are a combination of aluminium and wood. Bouvet itself has also extended its activities and is now a full extruder, thereby allowing even more innovation.
In the first years of this millennium, Bouvet started to explore the possibilities of Thermal Break for aluminium profiles, and that’s how they came across Aluro.
Patrick Bouvet, CEO, and Jérôme Pichot, Team Leader Machine Maintenance: “Our production batches vary from 1 to 300 profiles, with a range of 70 different profile types. This means that we need to change the machine’s settings several times a day. In order to produce efficiently, we need a machine with very short changeover times. The Aluroller was the only machine that could meet our requirements. Since 2007, the machine runs in a 3 shift production, 24 hours a day.”
But the quest for innovation and efficiency never ceases at Bouvet, and new isolation techniques have driven Bouvet towards the recently launched Aluroller EVO: “Our end customers are constantly looking for better window isolation, in order to keep energy bills low. It’s our mission to stay ahead of competition, so our R&D is constantly developing such high end isolation types. The challenge, however, is to find a machine that can easily and quickly insert these into the profile calves. And once again, Aluro surprised us with a machine that’s even faster, more accurate, and more ergonomic than the Aluroller we are still using today.”
“Our operators have only been using the EVO for a few months now, but their first reactions are overwhelming. The Lift-Assist significantly improves the ergonomic working conditions, since many of our profiles are quite heavy. With the Aluroller EVO, their way of working changes, but it changes for the better. I can already see it happening that all our operators will want to work with the Aluroller EVO!”
