The name Formator derives from a Latin word, which means “he who creates, he who invents”. Formator Safety Glass Ltd was born to produce and process special glasses, the immediate goal was to produce in order to export to foreign markets and to focus on high-end projects.
Among these special glasses there is laminated glass, glass shaped with particular shapes, screen printed glass, heated glass, thermochromic glass, glass with PDLC film and so on. The naval sector accounts 40 percent of the company’s turnover, while the remaining 60 percent is given by construction projects, especially high-end construction, with high-performance glass and smart functions.
One of the latest and most important creations using of Formator glass is the New York Vessel, an iconic building that has already become a tourist attraction, which follows equally well-known projects such as the London Shard -with its 310 meters is one of the tallest skyscrapers in Europe- the Doha Airport in Qatar and the Tour Odeon in Monte Carlo.
These are not of course random results, but the result of attention in research and innovation, attention to an increasingly demanding kind of customer, who is not satisfied by compliance of standards but asks for visual and aesthetic perfection.
Perfection is not a random result but it is achieved by choosing absolute quality partners and collaborators. Moreover, being the tempering furnace the centre of the entire production chain in glassworks, when Formator had to choose how to replace its first tempering furnace with something that was able to meet present and future standards, it started a severe and meticulous research that took several months.
Robert Miklus, owner of Formator, “We made specific and very demanding requests, because we wanted a furnace that was able to satisfy the most demanding customers, not only today but in the next 10 years to come. At the end we chose Mappi, an ATS 4.0 furnace. We chose them because they were the only ones who, besides respecting our requests in terms of technical performance, also guaranteed these specimens in writing. Today, after 6 months using this furnace, we can say that the machine not only meets the performance standards we wanted, but it goes far beyond our wildest expectations.
“It goes further for what concerns the quality of the glass, which has no defects even in case of square formats or with irregular shapes, traditionally the most difficult; for the ability to manage very thin sheets and this has opened up important new market opportunities, as well as minimizing and almost completely cancelling the glass defects ; for productivity, definitely higher than our previous oven; for energy saving, because this furnace, despite being 30% larger than the previous one, and with convection, has lower energy consumption.”
Asked if there it was anything that could be improved, Miklus added, “Honestly not. I don’t want to omit some aspects that, even if they do not directly concern the machine, are equally important. The furnace was assembled in a record time, on 7th August 2019, the first container arrived with part of the components and on 7th September after only one month, hardened glass was already being produced. Amazing! Equally amazing was the technical support, the assistance to the solution of every slightest mishap, but above all helping us make the most out of the potential of this machine. We are perfectionists and maybe in a few months we will raise the bar even more, but today we have nothing to say: Mappi left us speechless.”