ATHADER OPENS ITS DOORS TO THE WORLD FROM ITS NEW FACILITIES

When it moved to Errenteria just over a year ago, the firm gave an important international leap alongside the Bradbury Company, a group that acquired 50% of the capital in 2013.

Just over a year ago Athader moved to its new facilities located in the Mast Loidi industrial estate in the Guipuzcoa town of Errenteria. There, they have three buildings for the assembly and testing of equipment, a spare parts warehouse and some modern engineering offices. In all, it has 2000 square metres and a team of 25 people.

These new facilities and entering the international Bradbury Company group as shareholders, have enabled the firm to make an important leap, both in terms of products and markets. In fact, in 2016, in addition to increasing its turnover, it managed to access the Australian and Canadian markets, which has led the company to consider extending the plant in the short to medium term, adding a building with greater load capacity.

Today, the Athader trademark can be found all over the world. Thus, in addition to the domestic market, it carries out projects for Canada, England, Australia, Saudi Arabia, India and Latin America. The projects involve the design, manufacture and assembly of cutting lines for processing metal reels used in the steel industry.

Thus, the company, by means of turnkey projects, manufactures longitudinal cutting lines; levelling and crosswise cutting; reel and package strapping and packaging; special lines, and combined lines. It also remodels and retrofits facilities in use, and it has line automation and modernisation services. It also provides after-sale, technical assistance, maintenance and spare parts services.

Although its first steps in the foreign market were taken in the year 2000, over the last five years Athader has made an important leap alongside the Bradbury Company group, with which it firstly formed a joint-venture that helped it overcome the crisis and which, one year later, in 2013, acquired 50% of the company so the remaining 50% are still in hands of the founders, the Luengo family.

Thus, with the arrival of the international company, Athader managed to access global markets and customers thanks to the international presence of the group, with factories, offices and technical service on four continents and in 20 countries. It also extended its product range, integrating into its portfolio patented equipment with an important differential value.

Thus, today, the firm’s main markets are Latin America, Canada, Australia, Europe, USA and India. It bases its competitiveness, in all of them,on the adaptation of its products, solutions and services to its customers' needs, participating with them in the development of equipment by means of a constant and direct relationship. In the mid-term, apart from consolidating these markets, the company’s objective is to access other countries, such as Russia or South Africa. Regarding the domestic market, Athader counts on the trust of its portfolio of customers, which it maintains through a highly qualified team of engineers, technicians and commercial representatives.

Noteworthy among its recent projects, due to their characteristics, are the supply of a high thickness longitudinal cutting line, with capacity to process reels of up to 16 millimetres thick, incorporating a shaving-crusher, automatic loading and threading system, pit duplicator, exchangeable winder spindles, palletisation line, and automatic and robotised packaging, as well as multiple solutions in automation, time reduction, complete production-maintenance-optimisation monitoring,… It has also designed, manufactured and assembled an e–drive levelling line, with Bradbury e-Drive hydraulic leveller which achieves quality levelling and stress release, which is especially interesting for later laser cutting. The line has a rotary shear, combined double station stacker and an automatic packaging line.

To maintain the pulse of an increasingly demanding market, Athader puts considerable effort into R&D&I, focusing mainly on the automation and Industry 4.0 area. It has a specific department for these developments and a test bench for tests.

With respect to the company’s latest investments, in addition to the purchase of new facilities, they have been earmarked to the integration of a management system (ERP) that encompasses all the company processes, from commercial to after-sale service, including the financial and human resources departments.