For more than 80 years FAVA has been manufacturing systems dedicated to pasta industries, filing patents on increasingly high-performance, reliable and innovative technologies. A credibility gained in the field and testified by more than 2000 installations worldwide. We asked CEO Dr. Luigi Fava, for a preview of what visitors of IPACK-IMA 2022 will see during the fair.

What technological solutions are you focusing on these days?

"The production of pasta," confirms CEO Dr. Luigi Fava, "has always been the sector in which FAVA has concentrated its research. Lately it has developed technologies in which the valorisation of each raw material is guaranteed by unique and patented technological processes, production difficulties are limited and the control of parameters is facilitated. At IPACK-IMA 2022 we will be presenting a series of product and service innovations designed to meet the needs of global pasta producers, who are increasingly focused on increasing technological added value in order to obtain, an ever better quality product from available raw materials. Great attention will also be paid to maximising plant efficiency and reducing environmental impact."

What will we see at the fair when we’ll visit your stand?

"As our Technical and Research Director, Eng. Renato Dall'Agata (CTO)", continues Fava, "we will be presenting the most interesting improvements across the whole range of our lines and the applications of digital technologies related to Industry 4.0, in particular IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things), designed to maximise value-added services, related to both machine operation and after-sales; augmented reality techniques, predictive techniques based on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are applied in this innovative area. There are two main packages based on the IIOT Fava platform that we will present. The first, focused on maintenance and related to critical components, in which the machine is equipped with smart sensors (vibration, temperature, etc.) which, connected to all the other process variables, provide the user with precise indications in real time on predictive maintenance initiatives, enabling waste and unplanned downtime to be minimised. The other field of application of IIOT FAVA is predictive quality control: through the implementation of specialised sensors and vision systems, aesthetic aspects such as colour, physical integrity, defects and chemical/physical parameters such as water content are measured and sent to FAVA cloud. Artificial intelligence algorithms, placed on the cloud and properly trained, allow the expert user to receive indications if and how much the product is going out of the desired quality standards, indicating the possible technical and/or technological reasons: in this way the expert user can act in a predictive way, minimizing waste and maximizing the quality constancy of the finished product. In order to assist plant maintenance, we will present our Augmented Reality application, which will allow maintenance and operating personnel easy access to remote assistance, product documentation and spare parts portal, thus helping to improve plant performance throughout its life. We will also present the value-added services related to the laboratory Research e Development , such as: technical and technological training, chemical-physical and rheological analyses of raw materials, qualitative, chemical-physical, rheological and sensory analyses of finished products, pasta-making tests aimed at improving processes and the quality of finished products, pasta-making tests aimed at developing new raw materials and/or finished products.

Sustainability: what contribution can Fava solutions bring?

"The innovative FAVA technologies that we will be proposing at the fair will, on the one hand, make it possible to improve the quality of the product with the same raw materials and, on the other hand, to use raw materials with a lower environmental impact, i.e. obtained with less use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, in those markets that today allow it.

In terms of energy sustainability and environmental impact, we will present the FAVA products, auxiliary plants and technologies available today, which allow a significant reduction in both heat and electricity consumption per kg of pasta produced, without compromising flexibility, process capacity and ease of use.

Always aiming to meet the demands of the market, innovation is also expressed in customer servicefrom the design to the completion of the machine with 'whole life services' such as preventive maintenance, spare parts, online technical and technological support, overhauls, upgrades, training and everything else needed to offer the greatest benefits to its customers."