INTERVIEW WITH ABC ROTOMOLDEO

ABC ROTOMOLDEO is a company specialized in the production of plastic products using rotomolding.

Easy Engineering: A brief description of the company and its activities.

ABC ROTOMOLDEO: With an international presence and the latest technology in rotomolding, our goal is to manufacture the products that our customers need, always caring about quality and our environment.

In order to be more performant, we have integrated Lean Manufacturing, allowing us to optimize production costs and time, reduce our environmental impact and take on quality culture.

Nowadays, we export our products to more than 15 countries and our products are being exported at their time again to the rest of the world by our customers, prestigious multinational Corporations, so our products may be found everywhere on the planet.

This places us as the Spanish rotomolding most international company and is a testimony of the growth that we have experienced in the last few years thanks to our combined great efforts.

To help ensuring a bright future for our planet, we make use of recycled materials in our production process.

We launched the brand Pure Recycled that certifies that our products have been made from 100% recycled materials. This way, we avoid plastics from being deposed in our fields, cities and oceans and reduce the energetic and oil dependency.

Far beyond the highest of qualities, the respect for the environment and the engineering of our products, the success of ABC ROTOMOLDEO comes from our customers.

They are our existing reason and what we focus on. We learn from them everyday and they are the reason why our work is so enjoyable.

These values are above any other consideration for us and in ABC ROTOMOLDEO we try to grow better every day, offer reliable and safe solutions and become step by step the reference company in rotomolding in Europe.

E.E: What are the main areas of activity of the company?

ABC ROTOMOLDEO: Since plastics are useful for nearly any industrial activity, we work for many different industrial areas such as Energy, aeronautics, logistics, urban furniture, hydraulics, agriculture, automotive, civil works, Machinery, Medical and many more.

Our technical team is formed by several engineers specialized in different technical areas so we can offer a wide range of services and we are able to design or support our customers in the development of their plastic parts in nearly any area possible.

We accompany our customers during all the life cycle of their products: from conception and design until it replacement for new products, including of course prototyping and manufacturing but also continuous improvement, helping our customers upgrading their products into higher quality ones.

On the other side, we also have some product ranges that are owned and commercialized by ourselves.

ABC ROTOMOLDEO is one of the main European manufacturers for playground components. We have designed and we manufacture in our Spanish facilities different series of open-topped and closed tubular slides, ranging from 60cm to more than 5m tall. Also, we are the designers and manufacturers of the Best-selling Inclusive Swing Seat in the world. This is a Swing Seat designed for the ride of any child, specially those with any kind of physical handicap who cannot normally ride the usual Swings, giving them the chance to play as any other children completely safe.

We distribute our products to most European countries to the biggest Playground manufacturers in the world and in the last few years we started exporting to North America and MENA where we are escalating positions.

We also manufacture and distribute different models of Top Cases for Motorbikes, specially conceived for Fast Food delivery and Last Mile services. We count between our customers with both National and International brands, and more than 50% of the Pizzas delivered in Spain are transported in our Top-Cases.

Finally, we have a full range of garden furniture suitable both for domestic and Public use. We sell our products both to professionals such as hotels or to individuals using on-line selling platforms.

E.E: What’s the news for 2021 about new products?

ABC ROTOMOLDEO: First, we are focusing our efforts in promoting our Eco solutions. We are very concerned about environmental protection and always look forward to be one step ahead from what the industry is currently asking for.

On one side, we offer the possibility to manufacture our products using 100% Recycled materials. The solutions that most rotomolding companies are offering to their customers and what the industry is already demanding is the use of 30%-70% or 50%-50% recycled/virgin raw materials. Naturally we also support these percentages but we go further and we have developed the technology and recuperation system to be able to manufacture from 100% recycled Polyethylene, that results in products with the same physical and mechanical properties than the products made from Virgin PE but with certified recycled materials.

This is possible thanks to a hard work of recuperation and processing of our own or related industries scraps and wasted materials that guarantees no contamination, no mix of different kind of plastics and a limited number of recycling cycles that ensures that the chemical properties of the Plastic Powder remain suitable for rotomolding process.

On the other side, we offer an exclusive and unique material which is created by a mixture or regular Polyethylene with organic raw materials. These organic materials come from and agricultural waste from the rice industry that is normally burnt, and we recover it and treat it so it can be mixed with PE to form a stable chemical composition.

This material allows us to reduce the quantity of plastic (oil-derived products) into our products replacing it for organic, recyclable and environmentally friendly materials.

Concerning our own product lines, we are constantly improving our products. A new smaller version of our Inclusive Swing Seat adapted to the younger children is about to be released. In addition, we are adding more available modules for our Modular Tube Slides so that more configurations are possible.

Our Top-Cases are also receiving some improvements such as an enhanced lock, an exterior rack for extra capacity and some other ideas yet to be fully developed.

Finally, we added a new dosing tank to our existing range with a bigger model up to 200L in order to fill our customer’s necessities and adapt to the market’s demands.

E.E: What are the ranges of products?

ABC ROTOMOLDEO: Our main activity is to produce tailor made products for our customers. We produce plastic parts for many different industrial sectors including automotive, agriculture, energy, logistics and naval. We are producing either their own designed exclusive products or parts designed in collaboration with our technical department so while we manufacture thousands of different references for more than one hundred customers, our main product may be described as Plastic project management and production.

As stated before, we also offer some own designed products: These are products for Children Playground areas; Top-cases for delivery and motorbikes; Contract style furniture and Dosing depots.

E.E: At what stage is the market where you are currently active?

ABC ROTOMOLDEO: Actually, we work for many different sectors, from aeronautics to agriculture including such different sectors as urban furniture, medical o food machinery. So, we cannot talk about one market but the whole industrial B2B market.

Regarding the rotomolding industry, it is growing everywhere. There are many reasons for this but the main reasons are technological. Other plastic moulding technologies like Plastic Injection or Plastic Blowing which are in fact most commonly used in industry have been deeply studied and developed form many years while Rotomolding development has been stuck for a long time. However, the changes in general Industrial production process looking for tailor made, customized short productions instead of very long standardized productions lead to a transformation in the Plastic Industry where rotomolding becomes more relevant. This pushed a technological advance on this molding technology where more possibilities are available concerning materials, possible geometries, finishes… that put rotomolding at the same level of any other plastic molding technology.

Combining this technological advance with the trend of shorter productions to adapt to any and every customer’s needs let a space where Rotomolding fully fits, so our sector is living a growth that is not near to end since new materials and techniques for Rotomolding are becoming available constantly.

E.E: What can you tell us about market trends?

ABC ROTOMOLDEO: Rotomolding technology is experiencing a growth due to new technological development and the new industrial needs. More often than ever, small series and custom-made products are needed and this is where rotomolding excels, providing good quality solutions and low prices compared to other plastic molding technologies.

We noticed that there are more industrials now looking for the kind of solutions that rotomolding can provide and we think that this is the result of the companies of our sector working hard to let this technology be known and demonstrate its potential.

E.E: What estimations do you have for 2021?

ABC ROTOMOLDEO: Last year has been a strange year nearly for everyone. Added to the difficulties carried by multiple lockdowns we have experienced different stages and different responses from our customers depending on their activity. While some of our customers had to temporary stop their activity or have seen their business activity heavily slowed down, other have greatly increased their production rate and have asked for more pieces than ever.

This allowed us to maintain a certain stability on our production during 2020 but made us change our production process in many ways.

For this 2021 we noticed a great recuperation in mostly all sectors. Nevertheless, we encountered some challenges as the fast and great increase on the price of raw materials or the changes in some markets, since delivery times are becoming more and more important and some industrial sectors have exploded in such way that neither us nor our customers are able to produce at a sufficient speed to fill the demand of their products.

So, this current 2021 is a year of growth where new opportunities are encountered for the companies that did well and were able to adapt to the new situation during 2020, but is also a year of challenges since the market rules and the needs of the customers have changed, probably forever.