Meet Marco Martins – Head of Production in Portugal.
Marco – Tell us about our production in Portugal and how we work with sustainability and quality.
In the pursuit of a sustainable and stable production partner, sfPORTEQ recently partnered with a new steel and welding workshop in Portugal.
Production and quality:
This new partner controls its production process with high accuracy from the reception of raw materials to all parts received from our different suppliers in Sweden and all over Europe, ensuring traceability throughout the process, until the final inspection is performed by sfPORTEQ qualified technicians on site. The importance of self-control of what is being produced by each one is instilled throughout the production chain, the internal quality control ensures that throughout this process the pre-assemble parts are correctly performed until they reach the welders, all of them properly certified for the welding process they will perform.
Our partner has a wide range of qualified welding processes in carbon steel, austenitic stainless steel, aluminum and more recently cupronickel. They are able tocarry out the projects according to European (EN) or American (ASME) codes and have their welding process duly certified by EN3834-2. After welding, non-destructive testing shall be carried out in accordance with the requirements defined by the customer or on the basis of the inspection and test plan submitted by our partner and is always subject to customer approval.
Visual inspection is conducted on all of the welds, with two inhouse level 2 technicians and, at the end of each stage, a final inspection is performed by a 3rdparty certified inspectors. Subsequently, penetrating liquids, ultrasound or radiography may be performed through the scope as per customer requirements. At the end of the final inspection all the documentation is compiled and delivered to the customer. Every year we and our partner seek to introduce improvements in the production process, at the moment with the global investment process, the fact that starting the surface treatment (from blasting to finished product) in the same production facility we can deliver faster by reducing our carbon footprint and eliminating the need of intervention from other subcontractors in the supply chain.
Environment and sustainability:
Our partner develops an environmental policy, trying to adopt a responsible and environmentally sustainable culture within all workers and staff. They also comply with the legal requirements defined, namely, in the scope of waste management, emission control of gaseous effluents, rational use of energy, however, in the future they intend to go a little further and demonstrate through the ISO 14001 certification that this environmental policy of ours is indeed auditable and duly certified.Our partner is certified according to EN ISO 9001. They are not yet certified according to EN ISO 14001, however, the environmental policy is well defined. In its daily routine, some environmental management measures are taken to reduce the impact of our activity, such as: waste reduction, separation and recycling, such as ferrous and non-ferrous scrap, among other waste that is produced in the production chain.
Approved chimneys are used to extract fumes produced by welding and thermal cutting to be then filtered and recycled and introduced again in the surface treatment workshop, thus reducing the climatization needs that are used to control the sensible environment inside the painting workshop. They have also installed solar panels for water heating and photovoltaic panels to reduce the consumption of non-renewable energy. We are aware of the importance of environmental impacts so it is a future objective to help our partner to carry out the implementation of EN ISO 14001.
Visual inspection is conducted on all of the welds, with two inhouse level 2 technicians and, at the end of each stage, a final inspection is performed by a 3rdparty certified inspectors. Subsequently, penetrating liquids, ultrasound or radiography may be performed through the scope as per customer requirements. At the end of the final inspection all the documentation is compiled and delivered to the customer. Every year we and our partner seek to introduce improvements in the production process, at the moment with the global investment process, the fact that starting the surface treatment (from blasting to finished product) in the same production facility we can deliver faster by reducing our carbon footprint and eliminating the need of intervention from other subcontractors in the supply chain.
