Flety. Delivery times are now even more critical than price.

	Slip preparation area is often one of the potential bottlenecks in porcelain insulator production.

Ask anyone in the insulator industry what competitive conditions have been like in recent years and you are likely to hear very much the same story. Industry-wide overcapacity, especially when it comes to porcelain, increased competition from low-cost producers in developing countries and a seeming obsession among many customers to drive prices to ever-lower levels - even as they expect reliable deliveries with record short lead times.

The factors behind these market developments are not all that surprising. Indeed, this situation could perhaps even have been predicted several years ago given such trends as the slowing down of new line construction in the West, the increasing globalization of competition and the on-going process of de-regulation among electric utilities. The effects of this changed market environment on many insulator manufacturers are perhaps equally predictable - continuing reductions in the size of the work force, streamlining of product offerings and a heavy emphasis on continually improving productivity.

Filter press produces cakes with uneven mositure distribution which are conveyed automatically to primary extrusion.

“We have to be faster in our throughput times as well as more flexible and faster-responding to changing customer requirements.”

Among the firms facing these new market realities is Ceralep, one of the factories within the Ceram Group - today probably the world’s second largest supplier of porcelain insulators in terms of total annual turnover. Based in southern France, Ceralep has certainly witnessed its share of change over the years, seeing new owners and new management several times over before being acquired by Ceram about ten years ago. Now, a re-newed effort is underway to restore the company’s competitiveness and to return it to profitability after several very difficult years.

According to Managing Director Guy Delaval, one of the recent problems faced by Ceralep has been the sale of certain types of insulators at prices which did not even allow any margin for profit. This, he says, has been a result of ill-advised earlier decisions to match market prices for certain types of insulators, often dictated by low cost producers in low wage countries, in spite of the relatively high salaries of workers in France. Delaval,who joined Ceralep only last October and is a relative newcomer to the insulator industry, has been given a clear mandate by Ceram to turn this business unit around during 2001.