QUALICER, from Castellón towards the world

QUALICER 2012, the Global Forum on Ceramic Tile, closed its doors on 14 February at the Chamber of Commerce headquarters in Castellón (Spain).

During two intense days of work, over 600 Congress attendees of different nationalities passed though the four conference rooms with a view to sharing knowledge and experiences regarding the ceramic industry and its challenges for the future.

116 communications were presented as oral presentations or posters, in a technical programme that, for the 2012 event, focused on issues relating to sustainability and the environment. Under the slogan ‘Green is Growing’, the 12th QUALICER meeting addressed green procurement, sustainable architecture, the ceramic tile life cycle, and energy efficiency, among many other subjects.

As Martí Huguet, President of the Chamber of Commerce and Co-president of QUALICER, stated during the inauguration, ‘We want to contribute to making QUALICER the best vehicle for transmitting and promoting the advances of the ceramic tile, machinery, frit and glaze sectors in order to help foster the recovery and development of the global ceramic industry’.

QUALICER 2012, whose corporate identity features a world peopled by tiles, showcased a novel session entitled QUALICER ZOOM, exclusively devoted to digital printing through two monographic panel debates, which each lasted two hours, on the inkjet printing technique from a technological and from a strategic viewpoint.

The Congress, organised since 1990 by the Castellón Chamber of Commerce and the College of Industrial Engineers, sets forward a path that it began 22 years ago with fewer resources but with the same aim: to make Castellón the epicentre of ceramic tile R&D&I for a number of days.

QUALICER is backed by the technical advice of the prestigious Institute of Ceramic Technology (ITC) of Jaume I University of Castellón (Spain), and of the Institute of Ceramic Promotion (IPC) of the County Council and it is supported by organisations, public bodies and company sponsors whose contributions make QUALICER possible.

As the Co-presidents of the forum noted, ‘The College of Industrial Engineers and the Chamber of Commerce are fully satisfied with the increasingly international dimension and the ever-growing participation in the Congress’.

Through their presence at the inauguration, authorities such as the President of the Autonomous Government of Valencia, Alberto Fabra; the President of the Castellón County Council, Javier Moliner; and the Mayor of Castellón, Alfonso Bataller, sought to demonstrate the support of the different Administrations for the ceramic sector and the Congress.

The Qualicer 2012 meeting featured 7 invited lectures and 4 panel debates, which addressed highly topical subjects, analysing key issues for the future of the ceramic industry, new technologies and trends in design, and construction with ceramic pieces.

On the first day, the American Richard P. Goldberg, who knows QUALICER very well, provided a retrospective of 10 years on ceramic cladding in architecture.

Julián Pavón Morote’s lecture did not leave the audience indifferent. This expert in business management highlighted how the global economy is going thorough a period of unprecedented transformation as a result of the extremely rapid evolution of technological change and the emergence of economies such as those of India and China.

There was also an opportunity to enjoy the contributions of great architecture professionals, who presented their visions of new uses of ceramics: Juanjo Castellón, researcher in the Zurich Institute of Technology; recognised Spanish architect Felipe Pich-Aguilera; and Martin Bechthold, Professor of Architectural Technology at Harvard University.

Eliseo Monfort, researcher in the Institute of Ceramic Technology (ITC), Spain, introduced the subject of ‘green procurement’ and sustainability, and he performed an interesting a life cycle assessment of ceramic tiles in order to put on the table a number of the most topical issues in this field.

Particularly to be noted at this meeting was the monographic QUALICER ZOOM session, entirely devoted to digital printing technology, which Spain has pioneered, in addition to the panel debate on slip resistance directed by the Australian Richard Bowman, who was joined by other top experts from Germany, the United States, and Spain.

The last QUALICER 2012 invited lecture, delivered by Francisco Javier Neila, Full Professor in the Higher Technical School of Architecture of Madrid, presented the SOLCONCER project, fostered by the County Council through the Institute of Ceramic Promotion (IPC) of Castellón, a project that studies ceramic coverings and highlights their use under the strictest premises of sustainability.

Javier Rodríguez Zunzarren, President of the College of Industrial Engineers and Co-president of QUALICER, underscored ‘the important energising role of this Congress in the development of the industry’ and alluded to ‘the great number of participants at each meeting, as there have been more than 5,500 attendees in the course of these years’.

At QUALICER, the Global Forum on Ceramic Tile, the studies presented are divided into three thematic blocks: BLOCK A) CERAMIC COMPANY AND MARKETS, BLOCK B) CERAMIC TILE AND CONSTRUCTION, AND BLOCK C) CERAMIC TILE MANUFACTURE.

All the material published during the 12 QUALICER meetings may be consulted on-line. The compilation can be accessed through www.qualicer.org, a space in which searches can be performed by years, subjects, authors, and keywords of all the studies that have been presented at QUALICER throughout the years.

Rodríguez-Zunzarren, Co-president of QUALICER, touched on the situation of the Spanish industry and the global crisis: ‘A modern country cannot be a country without industry. It is necessary to reindustrialise Europe, for industry that was lost to return, for industry to improve where it still remains, for profit once again to appear in companies, and for smiles and optimism to resurface. This crisis will be overcome, world trade will react and be harmonised, and this QUALICER meeting will contribute to this end, as it has always done, and benefit all the delegates and the industries in their home countries’.

Delegates from Brazil, China, Japan, Italy, Australia, Canada, Iran, the U.S.A., Turkey, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Switzerland, among other countries, attended the sessions as listeners or speakers during the two days of work held at the Chamber of Commerce headquarters.

‘We need to take advantage of the opportunities that we are afforded in the next few years: new markets, new distribution channels, versatility in products, sustainability, a wider variety of specifications writers and, of course, innovation: in new uses, new spaces, and new functions for ceramics’ noted the QUALICER Presidents when the congress ended.

You can see more photos of the gallery congress Qualicer FLICKR