On the map of the Catas headquarters in San Giovanni al Natisone, the most important European laboratory for the wood-furniture sector, it is marked as "Building C", but everyone knows it as the
new "Furniture Laboratory", a very modern building rising from the ashes of the fire of 20thDecember 2016.
A dramatic event, which could have brought the Italian reality to its knees, "... but, at the opposite, we
faced together, forming a team and continuing to work, to carry out tests, to respond to the needs of our customers while the new laboratory grew up day by day", said
Bernardino Ceccarelli, during of the opening ceremony held on Monday 14thOctober in the presence of numerous representatives of the institutions and of the Italian and international furniture sector.
The new "Furniture laboratory" was built in
less than two years (the site was opened in October 2017) with an investment of 4 million euros, entirely covered by the own resources of Catas. A two-floors building of
over 4 thousand square meters: on the ground floor the 2,300 square meter laboratory, with controlled temperature and humidity, a fiber optic data transmission system and more than hundred machines and equipment for network-connected tests according to the rules of "Industry 4.0".
In the basement a warehouse of 2 thousand square meters and spaces for meetings and training courses; on the roof a 320 kW photovoltaic system to produce energy from the sun.
Would you like to know more? Welcome in our new furniture laboratory.Thus, a new chapter opens in the history of Catas.
The new laboratory will significantly enhance the institute's "productivity", which
from January 2020 will also be equipped with thirty new test machines for the analysis of formaldehyde and VOC (volatile organic compounds) emissions, a subject - the "indoor pollution" – of growing importance in the furniture world.
This tension to the future is also evidenced by the purchase of an area adjacent to the laboratory on which the possible future scenarios are already being imagined.