Universities

Which student hasn't asked their professor where the material they're teaching could be used? Many students get lost during courses that often don't make their application horizons clear.

And which professional hasn't realized the importance of that material for their work, even if late?

In a simplistic way, we can establish a parallel between the professor and pure research and the professional with applied research. It's clear that one needs the other. And, most importantly, an innovation is the result of this partnership.

Finamac™ maintains partnerships with the main schools that develop research work in at least one of the areas of application of our products.

In Brazil, we maintain contact with FEA-UNICAMP, FEQ-UNICAMP, POLI-USP, FAU-USP and ITA, considered first-rate educational institutions. Abroad, we are seeking the first academic partnerships with the opening of our branch in Miami, USA.

The shortage of labor in this area led us to invest in the creation of 3D CAD software design courses within the company itself, and this ended up being the seed for the foundation of the 1st. Technical School of Computer Graphics in the country, in 2002.

This school was approved by the MEC as a College of Technology and attracted the attention of larger educational groups, one of which acquired it in 2016. Finamac™ fulfilled an important mission by training many students during more than a decade in which it maintained the institution.

Foundations

The Casemiro Montenegro Filho Foundation was the first with which we signed a contract, in 2001, for the creation of the 1st. Professional School of Computer Graphics of Brazil, which originated within Finamac™.

Through it, we obtained support from professors from the Department of Computer Science of the Technological Institute of Aeronautics to prepare the school's teaching material.

The São Paulo State Research Support Foundation is the first to receive our proposals for innovative equipment, for which we foresee more than 10 years of partnership. Four very important projects are being analyzed that could revolutionize the ice cream machine market.

The Financing Agency for Studies and Projects will also receive our proposals as the work evolves, especially in the phases that require greater investment to launch the products on the market.

We believe that various types of Foundations, especially those linked to Universities with a focus on research, should be part of our evolutionary path.

Researchers

The ice cream and chocolate equipment industry is considered an extremely specific niche within the food industry. The number of companies in the world that have some structure can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Most of them operate with around 30 or 50 employees.

For this reason, the technical knowledge found in books and publications refers only to the operating principles, and the know-how, in fact, remains confined within each of these small companies.

The thinking heads rarely emerge from universities, whose concentration of interests is focused on broader topics and not as specific as ice cream. We can say, with some certainty, that current knowledge in this area is in a gray area made up of a dozen engineers and a hundred technicians and that, apparently, the new developments happen jointly, as if everyone were involved in the same project.

This can be confirmed at the (few) fairs where these companies exhibit their equipment: for years, there has not been a single new product launched by just one of them. The launch of small improvements is made by more than one manufacturer at the same time, a sign that they are all undergoing and enjoying the same evolutionary stage.

Therefore, the researchers we involve in our projects follow the same principle, that is, each one is a specialist in one part of the subject, and rarely has any experience with machines for this purpose. In the food sector, we make contact with the Colleges in the sector and they help us with ice cream formulations, new compounds, freezing processes, etc. In the refrigeration sector, we adapt what is already commercially known for freezing ice cream, which also involves the researcher in the food area.

The materials area is always