It’s a Hard Rock Business
- Automation
- References / Success Stories
- Drive Technology
- 30.6.2025
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The Breton Group was founded in 1963 in Castello di Godego (Treviso, IT) and today has more than 800 employees worldwide, holds 420 patents and operates four production sites. Breton specializes in the design and production of state of the art industrial machinery and plants for the processing of different materials like natural stone, marble, quartz, granite, ceramics, engineered stone, heavy clay, resins and foams, polymers and metals. The Group’s core value is simple but powerful: credibility through seriousness, which is non-negotiable.
Market trends: shift in perception and market size
Also in the stone processing business, machine manufacturers have been facing severe competition from manufacturers located in Turkey and Asia. Michele Duregon, CTO at Breton, says: “Cutting and polishing machines are becoming a commodity. The number of customers who need to process slabs in a really perfect quality is small, which means Breton has to adapt its strategy to secure market share.”
Duregon also sees changes in how people buy and what is important to them, especially among younger decision makers. “They focus on how a surface looks and feels like – to them it is not that important whether the material used is real natural stone or another material.”
As a general trend, Duregon mentions that natural stone is still an important market, although not growing in size, but with constantly rising expectations regarding quality. Ceramic stone, on the other hand, is on the rise, as this type of stone is no longer used for tiles only, but is more and more applied in larger sizes, for instance for kitchen applications. Ceramic stone has become a stronger competitor to engineered stone than ever before.
The need for an alternative source
Breton and KEBA Industrial Automation started cooperating in 2023, a time that was marked by extreme shortage of goods and components. Michele Duregon remembers: “We had really hard times with our drive supplier those days to meet our delivery demands and requests – that is why we started searching for an alternative source – in fact a complete alternative drive platform with focus on large power drives.”
The Breton products involved are machines for polishing natural stone – a core step in the process. And the bar was set high, since Breton needed a solution that was easy and seamless to integrate, ideally without code having to be rewritten.
Luigi Franchini, Sales Manager with KEBA Industrial Automation in Italy: “Timing was next to perfect, since we were launching and communicating Powerlink on our D3 drives those days. We ensured drives were available for tests at Breton as soon as possible and then we waited for feedback.”
"Integrating KEBA drives in our existing PLC programs was possible without any hurdles or show stoppers – not a single line in the code needed to be adapted. It was a one-to- one integration: easy-to-use as it is described in the text books."
Easy integration – truly open platform
Breton engineers performed in-depth tests with KEBA drives and were really impressed by the result. Duregon: “We were able to perform tests ourselves and to integrate the drives seamlessly into our solution without any support or training. Moreover, integrating KEBA drives in our existing PLC programs was possible without any hurdles or show stoppers – not a single line in the code needed to be adapted. It was a one-to- one integration: easy-to-use as it is described in the text books.”
This is exactly where we at KEBA see our task. To offer a truly open platform where tools can be integrated into third-party PLC projects. Our drives are available with EtherCAT, but also open to other interfaces such as Profinet and Powerlink “The fact that KEBA offers a tested and working Powerlink interface is a huge competitive advantage.”, adds Franchini.
"The cooperation with KEBA is quite new [...] but the first impression is simply great: discussions at eye level and an excellent cooperation."
Scalable platform where energy matters
Another big benefit of our drives platform at KEBA is the fact that it covers a very wide range and customers are not limited by the sizes they can choose from. Our drive product range covers drives from 1 to 300 Ampere, the corresponding motors are available as well. Franchini: “In fact we have been able to offer and replace the entire automation solution, down to the cables required.”
What is special about the polishing process is that brushes are accelerated and decelerated down at high speeds, which means that during the breaking phase a high value of energy is regenerated in the DC link. Franchini: “In the past Breton applied a strategy where regenerated energy was supplied back into the net. With the KEBA solution the regenerated power is stored locally in a capacitor module linked to the DC bus and re-used at an efficiency level of nearly 100% for the following movement by the brushes.”
Duregon: “The cooperation with KEBA is quite new and I cannot judge all details yet. But the first impression is simply great: discussions at eye level and an excellent cooperation with both Luigi Franchini and Giovanni Bettiol for commercial/technical issues and Fabrizio Rossetto for technical support.”
Together with Breton, we at KEBA will expand our cooperation and develop a new polishing machine. This new machine will also be designed with the support of KEBA electric sizing software tools to simulate the working cycle and calculate the energy regenerated during braking phase, will be introduced to the market at the next Marmomac trade show, September 2025. A hard rock story to be continued…
