When you look for high quality, productivity and profitability, metal stamping is the solution in many situations in very many different product manufacturing processes.
In fact, stamping technology allows you to produce quite complex shaped metal parts with the highest quality for the lowest cost and lead time.
But it is not only about expensive and high-performance machinery: it all starts with tooling design, where know-how and experience play a fundamental role in the final results.
SINUTA FCE, member of the SINUTA Group, was founded in 1995 in Portugal to assure the design and manufacturing of stamping tools for the production of offset satellite antennas by SINUTA, a worldwide major player in the telecommunications sector, known by its product design, recognized quality and big capacity output.
In 2019, SINUTA FCE decided to open itself to the market, thus enabling other industries to benefit from its knowhow and technological capability in the metal working in general and in the stamping technologies in particular.
Interview with Ricardo Nascimento (RN), CEO at SINUTA FCE.
Easy Engineering: What are the main areas of activity of the company?
Ricardo Nascimento: As stated above, SINUTA FCE is specialized in the design and manufacturing of simple, compound and progressive stamping tools and dies for steel or aluminium parts for all sorts of manufacturing industries.
With a very complete range of presses, up to 600ton, the mass-production and supply of stamped metal parts, out of a dedicated project or by reverse engineering of a sample, is also a very important business area for SINUTA FCE. This allows the company to offer turnkey solutions for its customers, be it manufacturers, big assembling industries or spare parts organizations.
On the other hand, SINUTA FCE is also a very well rated metal working company, offering high product and service quality and accuracy in machining for several subcontracting situations. For that, the company relies on a wide range of CNC machine tools, a laser cutting line, wire erosion EDM, welding robots, powder coating facilities, 3D measuring equipment, among others.
EE: What’s the news about new products?
RN: As a subcontractor, SINUTA FCE offers full customized products, according with the requirements of its customers. As already mentioned, although that stamping tools remain our core products, the available technology gives the company the ability to reply successfully to almost any request within the area of metalworking.
In addition, our expertise in design can also help in the analysis of the customers’ products manufacturing process to recommend design improvements that reduce or eliminate unnecessary costs or to suggest changes in materials or operations that could enhance the customer project in terms of cost or functional performance.
E.E: At what stage is the market where you are currently active?
RN: The major industries in Europe’s economy are automotive, aerospace and defense. Having in mind its presence in all those sectors, metalworking remains, probably, the most important industrial activity in Europe, despite the big and general impacts caused, in the last three years, by the Covid19 pandemic, the materials supply chain disruption, the war in Europe and the energy crisis.
In this scenario, demand for stamped metal parts continues to grow, triggered by the need to get high quality and reliability, reduce costs, standardize models, optimize inventory, replace non-sustainable materials, etc. These goals are common to many industries, from automotive to domestic appliances, from satellite to fluid power, from medical to oil and gas. Therefore, the market is up and running and we believe that SINUTA FCE can play an important role in it.
E.E: And what can you tell us about market trends?
RN: The need to reindustrialize Europe is at the heart of the European Commission strategy so the market for metalworking industry shall regain an increasing importance and become a greater opportunity for those players that believe in quality, automation and innovation.
In addition to that, the short and medium-term world environmental goals, together with the recent supply chain disruption in most products and raw materials, show the need to rethink and revise the previous industry move from Europe to far east economies and assure some relocation in the western latitudes. In this regard, the geographical position of SINUTA FCE in Portugal, with direct and close access to three important sea ports and to the main highway to Central Europe, is a very important strength.
E.E: What estimations do you have for 2023?
RN: 2023 shall be a decisive year for SINUTA FCE. Not only our order book is continuously growing but, more important even, customer projects are becoming more complex and the range of customer industries is becoming wider.
In addition to that, the fact that SINUTA FCE is much more than just a stamping tool maker, being able to produce and supply also the stamped and finished parts, is a strong and very positive highlight and shall help pushing the company to become a strategic partner to any customer looking for a turnkey solution.
SINUTA FCE is definitely on the right track and more and more capable of accepting the challenges of the 21th century global markets, especially in what concerns metal stamping solutions.