Insight

Welcome to the 2024 Janus Perspective, a unique feature that includes a wide cross section of global fastener business leaders. Named after the Roman God 'Janus' – who had the ability to look to the future and to the past, and was often depicted with having two faces – this feature brings together thought leaders from every facet of the industry, from around the world, to give us their retrospective on 2023, as well as prospects and challenges for 2024.

Mikel Zaldua, project manager

2023 was a record year for SASPI. We expected a good year because our clients were investing in quality machinery to respond to market growth, but the reality exceeded expectations. In addition to the planned projects, many unexpected orders arrived from new customers – including orders for several machines at the same time.

SASPI is a company that manufactures unique, high-quality machines tailored for each client and we are not used to a customer asking us for several machines that need to be delivered together. This was a challenge that we gladly faced last year.

Whilst 2023 was a record year there were also a number of challenges. Firstly, it was a year of transition in which the economy rose and industries returned to pre-covid numbers, but the supply chain did not completely return to its previous normality. This required an extra effort from us to respond to the high demand and meet deadlines as best as possible. Thanks to the hard work of our employees, we were able to meet requirements of this
need-filled market, which gave us opportunities to acquire new clients and forge new relationships. We are a family business that has created
long-term close relationship with lots of our clients, so we believe that the new relationships will also have a long-term history.

When it comes to 2024, we have good expectations, as we have already filled most of the production for 2024 and we expect this trend to continue in the medium term – as the industry continues to invest and at the moment we believe that demand exceeds production availability.

We believe that the main reason why companies are investing in new technology is greater productive efficiency. The objective is to produce more with less labour and for one operator to be able to control several machines at the same time. To add to this, implementing predictive maintenance technologies to identify potential problems before they cause downtime will be crucial in the industry. That is why we believe that automation and machine data control is the technology that will make the difference in the coming years.