SICEP renews Belpasso precast concrete plant in Sicily

SICEP is a leading company in the design, production, and erection of concrete precast elements for industrial, commercial, and residential building industry and infrastructures. Operating in the market for 70 years, SICEP is now one of the largest manufacturers of Southern Italy with two factories in Sicily.

ISO 9001 and 45001 certifications, SOA OG1 and OS13 qualifications allow the company to present itself as the ideal partner in the markets where prefabrication systems are widely used, both in the private and public fields.  Know-how and technologies developed in an international context make a big difference compared to a traditional manufacturer of precast concrete.

The year 2021 saw the beginning of an extensive programme of renewal of the Belpasso plant, which continued in the year 2022. Several new machines and equipment have been installed in the plant, and others have been retrofitted, meeting the most modern and efficient standards of Industry 4.0.

With the support of suppliers involved in precast equipment, SICEP has fully developed interconnections between the newly purchased production facilities and the management information system. This allows to optimize the production processes, monitoring in real time the parameters determining the performances of processes and products in terms of quality and quantity.

Highlight is the MCT Concrete batching plant

Among the new plants, the highlight is the Marcantonini Concrete Technology concrete batching plant. The retrofit implemented by MCT Italy consists of the following parts: replacement of the aggregates storage, extraction and dosing system of the architectural concrete production section, replacement of the three existing mixers with three high efficiency planetary mixers, output 1,5 cubic meters, replacement of all dosing systems and implementation of the component control and command system.

Three planetary mixers, with an output capacity of 1,5 m3, with microwave sensors, are able to ensure a total capacity of 60 mc/h of structural and architectural precast high quality concrete. The monitoring system ensures the quality of the products and production processes in real time centralizing all information in the factory integrated system.

The plant is controlled by a computerized system for the management and control of the entire production cycle, from the material loading systems, raw material stocks, the dosing according to the specific recipes and to the automatic distribution of the concrete in all the production bays of the factory. This system has been developed to simplify the process of the production and the distribution of concrete according to the different needs of each specific machine. This allows also the production data exchange in real time with integrated company costs management software.

“The batching plant is the heart of our precast factory, and the performance of the production activity depends on it. The development and growth of Sicep factories over the years have also been made possible thanks to the excellent partnership with high level companies able to offer cutting-edge solutions. MCT Italy S.r.l. is certainly among the companies that have allowed our success, thanks not only to its know-how but also thanks to its flexibility in adapting it to specific needs“- states Eng. Civello Luca.

“The drive for improvement and innovation of the SICEP company matched perfectly with the MCT philosophy which makes research and development the milestone of its industrial activity. Thanks to the upgrade of the batching plant, now the factory of Belpasso represents a „unicum“ in the Italian precast scene and I very proud to have participated in this important project,” concluded Eng. Luca Cellini, Area Sales Director at MCT Italy.