Enjoy the Holidays
Fortaco Team is wishing everyone relaxing and peaceful Easter holidays.
We hope your days will be filled with great spring spirit, and something you dearly value.
Fortaco strengthens its’ offering in marine industry
Rapp Zastava has long traditions and it represents an established brand in the field of production and maintenance of machines and equipment within the engineering industry. Zastava brand was established as part of a foundry specialized in the military equipment. In 2006 Norwegian Rapp Marine Group become the new owner and later transferred the production facility into the new location in Gruza in 2014.
The republic of Serbia has a favorable location. It is positioned at the intersection of two major European corridors in South-East Europe and connects with Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria, and Greece.
Major customers are well known and respected brands in the energy and marine industry. The company has a good asset base and a well invested machine park and testing facility. The region has a long industrial history and good access to skilled and well-educated workforce.
We are excited about the new possibilities, which we can offer to our customer in the future.
Fortaco expands footprint in Serbia
Fortaco Group has acquired Rapp Zastava, a Serbian company providing winches and other solutions to the marine industry. Rapp Zastava employs 150 people. A modern factory, located in Gruza, has been built in 2014 with 10.000 m2 of production space.
By this acquisition Fortaco is expanding geographical presence and offering in the marine business. This provides Fortaco and its’ customers with new capacity within steel fabrication and assembly business, also in the off-highway segment.
We would like to wish the Gruza team warmly welcome to the Fortaco family.
Fortaco team wants to thank you for the extraordinary year
2020 is the year we will remember as the global crisis for the human beings. The corona virus is here to stay, and the world must be ready to accept the ‘new normal’ until a vaccine will prevent the illness. The Covid-19 disease has caused sever damages for the human beings and the financial turmoil for some, for some not. The way to socialize, live and work has changed.
The off-highway equipment industry has faced impacts, in the spectra of slight to intensive. At Fortaco, we have turned around the way we are operating since mid-March: secured deliveries on-time, optimized individual employee protection, optimized sales to delivery planning with business partners, secured healthy cashflow, stopped travelling, met business partners in virtual and limited face-to-face meetings only when absolutely necessary.
Our philosophy is simple – no panic, we are professional and will manage the crisis. With speedy actions by all Fortaco teams we have secured healthy liquidity and good profitability, despite of decline in sales.
Dear customers, business partners and colleagues, we want to thank you all for the extraordinary year 2020 and for the tight collaboration.
Wishing you a Peaceful Christmas Time with your nearest ones and a Successful Year 2021 – aligned with the ‘new normal’.
Stay safe,
Fortaco Team
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Instead of traditional Christmas gifts, Fortaco has made a donation to charity:
Narva factory extension
Ever wondered, what does it look like to build a 10 000 m2 factory? Our partner Rand & Tuulberg not only did a great job as our partner in the factory extension project, they also filmed and edited an enjoyable clip for us to watch.
Layer by layer the magic was made - thank you for a good cooperation!
http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwKoaQk4C_0
Fortaco goes virtual - again
Fortaco is participating Subcontracting Trade Fair. Let's meet up online for networking and pick up the latest insights and industry innovations!
Subcontracting Trade Fair brings together industrial companies, experts and decision-makers. It is packed with new innovations, and you can meet with peers within the industry from Finland’s and Europe’s B2B scene.
This year, we will meet each other in a virtual Subcontracting event on 8–10 December. There will be plenty of live program, pre-recorded videos, and great opportunities for networking with experts and professionals in the manufacturing industry. Participation in the event is free of charge for visitors.
Join the networking event together with us!
Link to the event: https://www.alihankinta.fi/fi/
Narva factory extension timelapse
Ever wondered, what does it look like to build a 10 000 m2 factory? Our partner Rand & Tuulberg not only did a great job as our partner in the factory extension project, they also filmed and edited an enjoyable clip for us to watch.
Layer by layer the magic was made - thank you for a good cooperation!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwKoaQk4C_0
Construction Equipment Forum 2020 goes virtual
The aim for Construction Equipment Forum Nov 30 - Dec 1 is to network the players along the entire value chain within the construction equipment industry, even across national borders, and enable exchange of knowledge and experience. In order to ensure the aim for CEF will be achieved, it has been decided to arrange the conference as virtual, due to recent development in the spread of Corona virus.
The management conference brings together the players in the entire value creation chain within the construction machinery industry. More than 500 manufacturers, suppliers and customers from all sectors will exchange information in virtual during two days, make new contacts, and enrich each other's lives. The event is rounded off by a virtual innovation exhibition with 60 inspiring solutions and products.
Fortaco Group will also participate by a virtual stand. Dr. Rafal Sornek, Senior Vice President, Fortaco Technology, will give an online presentation on “Residual value of a machine - value enhancement through combination of IoT and blockchain technologies”.
Read more about the Speakers & Experts: https://www.constructionforum.eu/speakers
We are inviting you to register and visit the conference by using this link: https://www.constructionforum.de/anmelden
Welcome – and see you in virtual!
The Sorcery of Sourcing
Want to optimize costs in sourcing? The best method is to gain an intimate understanding of your suppliers’ products and technologies.
It’s perhaps no coincidence that the word “sourcing” sounds a lot like “sorcery.” A good sourcing manager can indeed appear to know black magic. But Lenka Hrušecká, Sourcing Manager Holic & Projects at Fortaco Group, says doing the job well comes from a combination of relationship building, pure curiosity, and a willingness to understand the suppliers’ world.
Relationships matter
Sourcing is finding the right source for the right costs and right quality with right delivery. “My job is to ensure that the components for everything we assemble in our factory has a source,” says Hrušecká. “That means we build relationships over the entire supply chain and challenge suppliers to improve costs. But not only costs. We ask they improve delivery, quality, and bring innovations and new ideas.”
Hrušecká’s team deals with approximately 200 suppliers, with around 50 of those considered strategic partners. “It’s impossible for our team to know all 200 personally,” she says, “so we invest real time with our strategic partner suppliers to whom we’re closely connected. We invest time in suppliers who want to grow with us, have a good combination of offerings, have the potential to be innovative, and can offer R&D support.”
Depending on your industry, 200 may seem like lot of suppliers, given the constant challenge to streamline and reduce the number of partnerships. “Before you can reduce the number of overall suppliers, you have to develop your strategic suppliers,” says Hrušecká. And that’s done through as many face-to-face meetings as possible with suppliers and her team, as well as category managers. The objective: learn their businesses, learn the cost drivers, learn the limitations and technologies.
Curious about screws
There are always calls to bring down costs and improve cash flow. But in order to do that Hrušecká says you have to understand what’s behind the prices, and what factors ultimately influence the final price. “You’ve got to have a hunger for information. You’ve got be curious about material groups, like screws, polycarbonates, even the simplest materials. The most basic screw will have a huge story behind it.”
For example, suppliers can tell you how the screw is treated and whether it’s possible to reduce the variety of screws used in assembly. “Suppliers can significantly reduce your costs by not only reducing the price, but also by proposing solutions to reduce assembly time, administration, or warehousing,” she says. “Suppliers, if there’s a good relationship, can offer better tools to allow operators to work faster and more efficiently, and they can support you in bad times, as well.”
“Glue is another example,” says Hrušecká. “How’s it made? Is it curing too long and influencing the final product, and final costs? And polycarbonates: what’s important and what differentiates them? High optical, low optical? What are the regulations and norms? Ours is a strangely wonderful business. You’d probably never imagine that suppliers talk about cabin glass with love!”
A fresh, female approach
Hrušecká studied marketing in Bratislava, worked in media, advertising, and then found herself as marketing director at Bratislava's biggest shopping mall. Moving to western Slovakia with her family, she joined Fortaco as a junior in the sourcing department. "I wanted to learn the business from the ground up," she says, "so I studied drawings, absorbed the technical details, and after six months I was responsible for ready-to-weld parts." She bounced around a bit in the industry, but returned to Fortaco, becoming sourcing manager for three Fortaco factories across Europe dealing with cabin and vehicle assembly.
Hrušecká loves the teamwork in what is a predominantly male industry. "There are very few women in the factories, and women perceive different things than men. This combination actually makes for a great team, though it’s not always easy to convince men of this.”
"I once told a future boss in an interview that I was creative and improvisational, and he suggested improvisation wasn't the best approach to the job,” she says. “But since then I've seen the approach bring some very interesting solutions for customers. This way of seeing the world can really impact the numbers."
Milestone in Narva industrial development – new factory launched
“This was a project, which was really big – maybe it turns out to be the biggest project in my life”.
A factory extension project was kicked-off in 2015, when we first time started to foresee an overload of new project implementations, and lack of space, as well as capacity constraints. Many actions were connected to operational excellence allowing us to accommodate additional work into the company up to +100%. 30 revisions of a business plan were executed before the final approval.
Mid 2017, when we celebrated a 70 year anniversary of Fortaco Estonia, we officially announced the start of the extension project. This will be an investment of 10.000 m2 in factory floor as well as investments in several welding robots, CNC machines and bending capacity, in total 10 MEUR. The extension project was supported by the Estonian government with the amount of approx. 1 MEUR.
Before autumn 2017 old buildings were demolished, and we started technical design for a new production hall. After extensive technical and commercial preparations a construction work was started by a contractor, Rand and Tuulberg, during summer 2019. We assigned Andrey Ponomarev from Fortaco Estonia as Project Manager. Andrey was doing excellent job in cooperation with all stakeholders. Thanks to all dedicated work done by the project team, partners, Fortaco Estonia Leadership Team, we managed to finish construction work successfully in August 2020 – according to time schedule.
”This was the biggest project I have participated from a concept and design stage, and I think this was like a fresh wave for us in our daily routine jobs. There were some challenges during the project, but all of them have been analyzed and worked through for a next similar project. The most memorable moments are in the beginning and at the end of construction; I was participating in project documentation and development for two years before the real construction work was started, and it was nice to see the factory layout starting to be realized with equipment installation” – Andrey Ponomarev.
In 2020 Fortaco Estonia was awarded by the Estonian government as the best company for its’ contribution to the regional development of Narva, Ida-Virumaa county. In 2019 Fortaco Estonia was awarded as the best company of Narva city for the result.
I would like to thank all who contributed to this successful project. I am happy that Fortaco Estonia will now have wider possibilities to boost new business implementation and support customers’ supply chain strategies. I am also very glad that our employees will get working conditions with advanced technologies to develop their skills.
I am sure, this will be a great continuation on our road to success.
Larissa Shabunova
Managing Director
Fortaco Estonia