The world of glass forms plots of invisible synergies that give wise people the opportunity to express their creativity with intelligence and professionality. One of the companies that expressed at best, exploring and extending the potential of the application of glass, is TGD Thermo Glass Door based in Pavia, at the gates of the Lombard capital.

TGD is a young company, founded in 1999, which today boasts 80 permanent employees and since 2014 has been part of the LU-VE Group, an Italian multinational founded in 1985 by Iginio Liberali who reached with its latest acquisition an annual revenue of over 400 million euros and is listed on the Milan Stock Exchange (MTA).

TGD Thermo Glass Door has always produced insulating doors for refrigerators for displaying preserved products, used both by large-scale retailers and for ice cream parlors, pastry shops, wine bars and food vending machines. They are also used for the preservation of medical products and all such products that need an exposure, even subzero, aesthetically refined but of extreme quality for the preservation of the products.

"Inside TGD there is a glass department that takes over a third of the entire company”, explains Daniele Carena, the company's Glass Department Manager since about two years. “The glass industry is constantly evolving: we temper and assemble the insulating glass; moreover, we have recently been specializing in digital printing to perfect the aesthetics and beauty of our doors with screen printing".

The other division of the company is responsible for creating the finished product: the door itself, complete with handles, hinges and frame. "Our biggest investment, which can be said goes hand in hand with the continuous research of our technical department, always projected towards the improvement of quality and aesthetics, is aimed at the growth and specialization of each of our individual operators, “continues Daniele Carena. “That's why when we purchased the latest LiSEC machine, an automatic sealing robot of the latest generation with the same technological refinement to no one in the world. We sent our operators to Austria, where the parent company is based, to do a specialized training. The aim is to ensure that every single person who uses our machines truly knows the tool with which he works in order to obtain the best result and know-how to face the difficulties, also regarding maintenance, that can occur to any new and new and so complex machine”.

LiSEC offers this exclusive personalized training to customers who purchased its technologically advanced machinery for flat glass processing.

"The great added value of this training at the headquarters of LiSEC in Austria was tangible, not only from a technical point of view but also from a human point of view, “says Carena. “ “Our wealth is our brain, the ideas that, as we all know, are activated best when the work environment is peaceful and welcoming.”

Joining LiSEC meant for us to be welcomed as if we had always known each other, to breathe an air of total harmony, cooperation and exchange. Our operators, for example, exposed an operational difficulty, encountered since the early days, with one of the gaskets of the new machine and when they arrived in Austria, the LiSEC engineers had already found the solution to the problem.

The willingness to listen and the commitment to find together the best way to make the new machines run at their maximum potential are priceless, because even the operator feels he has made his own contribution to improving research. This collaboration between operators who use the machines every day and technicians who create them is the union of intent that leads to perfection in the technological development of new systems, not only in the glass business but in every sector.

If every company that sells machinery did as LiSEC, research and progress would certainly benefit without setbacks or loss of time and money, because to meet the operators who use their own machines and who detect the critical points, the problems and the slowdowns practically allows engineers to create increasingly accurate and performing products. “Seeing the new LiSEC automatic sealing robot working was a sight! In front of high-performance machines like these, the desire to invest remains high”.

The market for glass doors for refrigerators is constantly growing and has very special requirements.

The objective of TGD is to create doors that allow excellent visibility of the products inside. The difficulty is given by the thermal change to which they are continuously subjected. The stresses caused by significant temperature changes are “in the order of the hour”: if you think of ice cream and soft drink refrigerators in the middle of summer you can easily count more openings per minute. For this reason, TGD technical office has filed several patents.

Dr. Carena also underlines the importance of operating refirgirators with closed doors - even in supermarkets, for an environmental sensitivity and sustainability.

This, in addition to reducing energy costs due to the lower dispersion of the cold, makes the environment in which the customer has to shop more comfortable, avoiding exposure to low temperatures and allowing the products to be stored at the optimum temperature. For a company like TGD, creating doors in favor of thermal insulation requires constant research and quality checks on several fronts: glass is the first to be tested and "stressed" by important temperature changes but also hinges, handles and the profiles must pass the established quality checks and standards before obtaining the TGD mark. In a future vision, the technical office aims to achieve a very high aesthetic level: the transparent edge of insulating glass and digital printing are just the latest innovations created to meet the new needs of the market.

Finally, the Glass Department Manager states: "There are three qualities that characterize Thermo Glass Door thanks to the values ​​that the Lu-Ve Group transmits to us: dynamism, loyalty and 'familiarity' in the most positive meaning of the term, because there is constant attention from top management to make us all feel important and an integral part of the same family”.