Roccia Machinery, the UK machinery supply company that represents Italians GMM and Brembana (among others) has started the new year by taking on the agency in the UK and Ireland for T&D Robotics, which makes robots for stone processing.

Darren Bill, Sales Director of Roccia, based in Derbyshire, says he believes this is a technology whose time has come.

The robot arms have been around in manufacturing for years, but the difficult part has always been the software and processing speed. That has developed considerably in the decade since robots first started appearing on stands at the Marmomacc international stone exhibition in Verona.

Darren says: “This is an exciting new venture for Roccia in technology which is proven for architectural stone and kitchen worktop fabricators. T&D Robotics is the innovator for this technology in the stone industry, which we see as a perfect fit for Roccia considering our existing agencies.”

T&D robots can be equipped with wire saws, waterjet cutters and milling heads, to carry out almost any processing job on just about any natural or man-made stock.

Darren says the agency came about after Roccia was approached by T&D in November. T&D had been looking for an agent in the UK and Ireland to benefit from the strong demand for machinery here. Word of mouth recommendations took the Italians to Roccia.

“I had a meeting with them a couple of days before Christmas and we tied up the deal today (7 January),” Darren told NSS.

The move comes after a record-breaking year for Roccia in 2015, which has continued into 2016. “Enquiries are absolutely flooding in for all the machines,” says Darren.

This year Roccia will continue the expansion of its service team and is currently going live with a bespoke software solution to provide better response and feedback to service and spare parts enquiries.