Surface Inspection - Who we are

"Important Notice: Surface Inspection UK Limited - in administration ("the Company")

RD Allen and RM Hawes of Deloitte LLP, 3 Rivergate, Temple Quay, Bristol BS1 6GD were appointed as the Joint Administrators of the Company on 1 June 2009. The affairs, business and property of the Company are currently being managed by the Joint Administrators, who act as agents of the Company only and without personal liability.

If you have any queries regarding the administration, or would like further information regarding a possible acquisition of the business and assets of the Company, please contact Ralph Paterson (rpaterson@deloitte.co.uk) or Rachel James (rajames@deloitte.co.uk) of the Joint Administrators' team."

Overview

Surface Inspection, together with Nuova Fima and LGWAY are a group of companies with over 60 years of combined experience. The group boasts an installed base of over 3000 sorting lines, over 600 automatic inspection systems, several hundreds decorating lines and over 200 LGVs.

Surface Inspection is specialized artificial vision system: it designs, develop, manufacture and market automatic inspection systems for quality control of ceramic tiles. Our systems are used to inspect ceramic tiles both during the production process and at the last stage of quality control before packaging.

We are proud to have concluded a range of innovations that improve both our products and the services offered to our customers worldwide. Our aim is to guarantee continuous development of a wider and better range of products together with an even more efficient service to our customers.

Surface Inspection is part of a global niche market, with three fundamental characteristics:

Its customers are companies that lead ceramic world production;
Its employees are highly competent and the company's key positions are held by professionals renowned in their respective sectors;
Surface Inspection products represent the reference in their sector with regards to performance, reliability and technology.

For the three years 2008-2010, in addition to further consolidating its position in existing markets, Surface Inspection will concentrate on four main targets:

Growth in our existing markets and further improvement in terms of efficiency and profitability of all internal and external processes of the company;
Strengthening our customer relationships in order to develop products to give the most efficient production;
Increased level of service to all territories, with a dedicated team of service people active 24/7 that thanks to the Remote Service Assistance allow to operate and manage any of our systems via Internet connection.
Extend our range of artificial vision technologies beyond the ceramic sector.

Product and sales strategies

Surface Inspection has always been a precursor and an innovator in developing automatic inspection systems for industry, with a strong focus on the ceramic tile industry during the last few years. Its prominent position is the result of thoroughly understanding its customers' needs, the capability to provide reliable solutions and working with customers to adapt and help them optimize their equipment to give the most efficient production.

More than 20 per cent of the group employees are dedicated to the continuous development of our products. These include areas such as product engineering, mechanics, electronics, embedded real time software and high performance image processing. Over the last year we have introduced on the market the Flawmaster 5G that brought a number of great innovations to its predecessor helping customers to sort to greater level of reliability a broader range of tiles.

International presence

By operating group policies and integrating the customer support services of associated companies, Surface Inspection has increased its presence in key regions and has improved the quality and quantity of the services offered in countries such as Mexico, Brazil, Spain, South East Asia, Iran, Turkey, Germany and Russia.