Posts by: Momentum

Marmo+Mac, the big international Italian stone exhibition, was back in the fairground in Verona 29 September–2 October after being online only in the face of the coronavirus pandemic last year.

High levels of demand, £175billion of government-backed loans and job retention schemes, a tax ‘super deduction’ for capital investment and a growing confidence in the use of IT encouraged firms to invest without waiting to see what was at Marmo+Mac as the live show returned to the fairground in Verona in 2021 after the Covid hiatus.

Plymouth-based worktop fabricator Mayflowerstone has set a target of doubling its turnover in the next two years thanks to a £600,000 investment in state-of-the-art equipment that includes a waterjet cutter and Robo SawJet.

In the March issue of NSS we reported that Natural Stone Surfaces had bought a second Robo Sawjet. The company in Derbyshire invited us to pay it a visit to see its BACA robots in action. Eric Bignell accepted the invitation.

They are versatile and fast. That’s the attraction of BACA’s robots, sold in the UK by LPE. Robot arms have been seen as the next step in stone processing for many years, but achieving the promise of their potential has proved troublesome, especially for worktop fabricators. Then came BACA’s Robo Sawjet, followed by the Robolution, which offers saw and waterjet cutters that can also cut mitres. With them opinions have started to change.