After two years, Hidria in Tolmin again hosted a gathering of our main suppliers from 33 European companies. At this expert conference we presented our business plans and expectations to our partners. And awarded the two best for their contribution to the development of our corporation.

This year’s expert conference was the third such event involving international suppliers – the previous conferences were for domestic suppliers only. In addition to Slovenian suppliers, there were participants from the neighbouring Italy and Austria, and from Germany, Switzerland, France and the Netherlands. 45 representatives attended interesting workshops and lectures. There they could see the direction which the development of our corporation together with them would be taking, what our development plans for diesel engine cold start systems were, where we see opportunities and what we expect from our partnership.

We also informed them about the growth of our market share in the diesel segment and the innovative and breakthrough projects of our Hidria Advancetec business unit that are opening many new business opportunities. Dr Franci Pušavec, professor at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Ljubljana, and Miha Verdenik from the company Lean rešitve upgraded our knowledge with new developments in cutting technologies (Dr Pušavec) and the TPM project in Tolmin (Verdenik), aimed at decreasing losses and improving the efficiency in production processes.

This informative conference was concluded with a presentation of awards to the best suppliers of Hidria Dieseltec. This year the awards went to Kanthal from Germany that supplies heating resistors, and the Italian Tehnogomma producing high-quality and durable sealing O-rings. We could say that both companies grow together with us, as we have been working together since the very beginning of production of diesel engine cold start systems and glow plugs in Tolmin. Their parts are present in each and every one of our systems that have been produced over 200 million times in the last 40 years.