Founded in the late Sixties in the industrious Italian North – East, by a local entrepreneur as a domestic workshop specialized in the regrinding of big size rollers and cylinders, over the years RIF has widened its offer and established itself as a Company with a prominent position in the international marketplace as a Supplier of maintenance, refitting and surface renewal of the rolls and cylinders operating in several industrial sectors, primarily in the paper, board and tissue production lines.
RIF is also active in other industrial fields where cylinders or rotors are installed in the production lines, with special focus on medium and big sizes. The other industrial sectors ranked by importance are plastic film production mills in general, rolling mills for the metallurgical sectors, textile industry and lately also an interestingly rising importance in the field of energy with high precision grindings for turbines, rotors and shafts.
Since the year of its foundation RIF has grown tenfold in size and the Udine Plant now occupies an area of approx 130’000 sqm thereof 20’000 sqm are covered.
Along with the traditional activity of advanced and value adding maintenance provided to the existing rolls of the Clients, RIF does also design and manufacture new rolls and is nowadays a a recognized landmark for OEMs and Users of medium to large cylinders.
In particular cases, when the transportation of the cylinders is not possible due to size and weight (i.e. Yankee cylinders in tissue production) and under particular work conditions, the grinding, balancing, and thermal spraying operations have to be made on – site, directly at the Mill.
This is possible thanks to in-house designed and manufactured CNC portable machinery ensuring reliable quality and expert Teams working in shifts around the clock to minimize the costly paper machine downtimes.
The RIF On Site Service is internationally known for service quality and accuracy and the volume of this business line has shown a significant boom in the past few years.
This service is strongly underpinned by the management of logistics and by a close cooperation with the Clients in all organizational issues which concur to the positive achievement of the overall goal: accurate technical service in the minimum possible working times and with a reduced preliminary burden to the Customer to enable the setup of the working equipment in place.
The traditional product range has finally been integrated by a diagnostics service, either at RIF or on site, including vibration analysis, various measurements and non destructive testing.
Company – Legals
The Udine Headquartes and Plant hosts two companies whose competences are closely connected whilst maintaning their distinctive identity:
• RIF S.p.A. > a family company owned by the descendant of the Founder;
• RIF ROLL COVER SRL > a Joint Venture between RIF SPA and VOITH PAPER resulting from the transfer of the RIF preexisting business line producing polymer covering of rolls for further upgrade and market presence. RIF ROLL COVER is an approved Supplier by Voith, not only for a number of rubber coverings to be installed in Voith machines worldwide, but also as a Partner/Strategic Supplier for fine machining of rolls and suction shells.
In spite of a clear legal different identity between the two companies, they are closely intertwined being hosted into the same location with a well structured agreement of exchange of services thus creating synergies, allowing flexibility and avoiding unnecessary heavy overheads as compared to size and resulting ultimately into a competitive edge.
