Containers filled all over the world
«Envases llenos por el mundo» — Indicador d’Economia, March 2025, in Spanish
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Original headline
«Envases llenos por el mundo»
Our translation: «Containers filled all over the world»
Standfirst
«Las máquinas inteligentes de llenado de recipientes de AiCROV consolidan su expansión a los mercados internacionales»
Our translation: «AiCROV’s intelligent container filling machines consolidate their expansion into international markets»
By Javier Díaz. Photograph by Alba Mariné. Cover story, page 5.
Our translation (extract)
AiCROV created a piece of software for filling containers intelligently ten years ago. The company, based in the Riu Clar industrial estate in Tarragona, designs and manufactures steel machines for decanting liquids into containers from 1 to 1,500 litres, above all for the chemical, petrochemical, food, logistics and pharmaceutical industries. “We adapt every machine to our customers’ processes and needs, and we move any liquid, whether viscous, sticky, flammable, foaming or even explosive,” explains Albert Rovira, founder and CEO.
“The most automated machines use leading-edge technology, such as anthropomorphic robots and 3D artificial vision systems. The software for all our equipment is written in house, in our own department,” says Rovira.
AiCROV was born in 2006 to provide automation and control services to chemical and petrochemical companies that needed to program or reprogram industrial machinery. Rovira was its only employee. It now has a workforce of forty and sells its machines around the world: the United States, Canada, Mexico, Peru, France, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Australia, India and Egypt.
The Tarragona company is currently installing four IBC filling lines and three automatic jerrycan filling and capping lines at a new plant belonging to the largest fertilizer producer in Australia. It is also working on a machine for a chemical producer in the United Kingdom, with infeed and outfeed conveyors sized for six pallets and equipment for filling drums and IBCs.
Among the most significant projects it has taken on since it was founded are the sixteen filling robots for flammable products supplied to a new BPCL packing plant in India in 2018; the manufacture and installation of a complete filling plant at a Spanish pharmaceutical company in 2020; and a fully automatic drum filling line in 2019.
From the “Perfil propi” box: Albert Rovira — photographed with Virginia Sánchez, Operations Director, and Leticia Mulet, Deputy Director — studied Electronic Engineering at the URV, but the only part of the degree that interested him was “the industrial automation side”. “Professor López let me research in the laboratory whenever I wanted. I learned fast and joined Siemens as an intern, where I spent a couple of years. Then I worked as head of programming at a machinery design company, until I founded AiCROV.” After twenty years in the business, his interests moved from the technical side to management. “I love learning and I am very self-taught,” he says.