Locally, Sapa steps up with 37,000 hours

Increased knowledge is driving the use of aluminium solutions, and Sapa is one of the educators. Last year, the company provided more than 37,000 hours of technical training to external stakeholders worldwide – more than twice the amount provided in 2013.

Most of the training is offered free of charge to customers, product designers and developers, technicians, engineers, and architects across markets and industries. Only in a handful of countries are participants required to pay a small fee according to government regulations.

The growth in the amount of technical knowledge training, from 15,000 hours in 2013 to 37,000 hours in 2014, took place in all of the company’s business areas and in all regions. Local support is the goal.

Tutoring takes place in a variety of ways and settings. In extrusions, Sapa arranged about 30 Profile Academies, drawing nearly 900 participants in all. In addition, the company hosted tens of customer and market-specific workshops, mainly in Europe and the United States.

Sapa established its Profile Academy concept in 1996 and has been tweaking the scheme ever since, keeping the style modern and the information fresh and forward-looking. Up until now, some 5,500 people have attended in Europe, and another 2,000 in North America.

Locally, Sapa steps up with 37,000 hoursThe two-day Profile Academy must include a number of mandatory sessions for the event to be designated as such. As an example, the agenda must have a group workshop which results in the development of a design for a product using extruded aluminium. Participants have access to product designers, metallurgists, and other internal and external specialists.

Building and tubing
In addition to the general extrusion sessions, which accounted for about 40 percent of the amount of technical training hours last year, Sapa hosted and educated another 1,900 external stakeholders in scores of events related to its automotive tubing, industrial tubing and building systems businesses.

The building systems sessions were mainly product and application-related and arranged throughout Europe, while Sapa’s aluminium tubing business prioritized training seminars on high-performance tube alloys and coatings for industrial heat exchange applications in locations around the world.