High-class engineering Trimo

Photographer: Borut Peterlin

HIGH-CLASS ENGINEERING

Trimo is a global provider of original and complete solutions for the construction industry with a well-earned reputation for building engineering excellence in its more than 50 years of history. Industry Europe looks at the reasons behind the company’s success.

Photographer: Miran Kambič

Trimo provides its clients worldwide with original and complete solutions in steel buildings, roofs, facades, steel construction, containers and sound-proof systems. It is represented in more than 50 countries, with daughter companies, representative and branch offices and agents in 25 of those. The company operates dedicated production facilities in Slovenia, Russia, Serbia and United Arab Emirates and its head office is located in Trebnje, Slovenia.

Established in 1961 as a small family business, Trimo has grown to employ over 1100 people within a group and achieve a turnover of over €150 million, while still retaining the family values on which it was founded. And these values continue to play an important role in the company’s success, particularly during the recent challenging economic times.

A company spokesman said, “The recession certainly affected Trimo as it affected the whole of the construction industry, particularly with a lack of available investment and funding and with projects cancelled or delayed. We have been able to emerge relatively unscathed, however, and we believe that is largely due to the fact that we have a widespread international sales network that was able to balance the risks presented by different territories at different times.” Innovation motivation

As a mark of Trimo’s long-term commitment to staying at the very forefront of the construction industry’s ever-changing regulations, the company was the first to produce non-combustible products in 1987. Since then, it has continued to develop and launch fire-proof concept solutions for walls, panels and steel, which has seen Trimo expand its provision to that of a full service consultancy.

As its portfolio and capabilities have grown, so too has its total service offer. Its strategy has been to maintain organic growth rather than carry out acquisitions, so it has always ensured that it is able to develop and maintain all the required expertise in-house.

Photographer: Studio Virc

Photographer: Borut Peterlin

This strategy is also reflected in Trimo’s aim to achieve further rapid growth on a global level. Trimo knows that it is more than capable of redeveloping new concepts in new markets, by introducing local teams with extensive local market knowledge.

Award-winning products

Trimo’s current product portfolio includes an extensive range of building panels, prefabricated buildings and construction systems as well as the Qbiss by trimo modular facade system and ArtMe facade surface treatment, which has been awarded the prestigious Red Dot Product Design Award in 2010. Mr Goste explained, “Qbiss by trimo stands for quality building innovation smart skin and is a completely modular facade system that has defined the standard for a modern building envelope. It’s practical and beautiful and one of our key products for future commercial growth.”

ROCKWOOL CORE SOLUTIONS

To emphasize the importance of fire safe building envelopes, TRIMO and ROCKWOOL CORE SOLUTIONS organized together on the 11th of October in Trebnje, Slovenia, a seminar on fire safety of buildings, which included several expert presentations and real live comparative fire tests of different types of sandwich panels, under controlled conditions. With more than 150 participants from 15 different countries, the fire event was a great success.

The expert presentations focused on standards for sandwich panels, fire safety in buildings and fire risk management. They raised awareness of dangers associated with smoke toxicity. In fact, most victims of fires suffer from breathing contaminated air containing poisonous gases and not from burns.

Sandwich panels with different insulation cores are available in the construction market. Their fire resistance and their performance to fire vary significantly. During the fire tests, the fire performance of sandwich panels with polyurethane, polyisocyanurate and stone wool cores was compared. The tests showed that in a real fire situation sandwich panels vary in performance depending upon the core type and that polyurethane and polyisocyanurate sandwich panels produce substantial amounts of smoke. Choosing a product whose core is non-combustible is a certain way of ensuring that sandwich panels do not contribute to a flashover in a fire and will not significantly increase fire intensity at any stage.

It’s up to all decision makers involved in the building construction process to make a responsible choice and decision for the optimum fire protection and safety according to the project. Continued success

Over the past couple of years Trimo has been focusing on development and continuity of projects, while looking to develop new relationships on good projects with financially healthy clients. Its dedicated R&D department has been pushing ever-harder with innovation.

The company representative concluded, “We are a very strong company with a family spirit. Our focus on innovations that add value to building projects is consistently appreciated by clients and the architects that specify the Trimo name, and we are excited to see this positive story continue. We have a rather young workforce that is filled with new ideas and enthusiasm, as well as longer-term employees that bring a priceless experience to our products and projects. It’s a great balance and one that can meet the most demanding of requirements.” n

Photographer: Miran Kambič