Our journey started early Sunday morning – on an 8.30 flight to Northern Italy to experience EOGB training at their illustrious Baltur development facility near Bologna.  We had spent the night before at a Stansted Airport hotel to make sure we were in good time to meet our EOGB hosts in the airport the next morning.

The week-long course didn’t start until Monday which gave us a chance to catch some sun and get our bearings in Cento, the Northern Italian town which houses the Baltur factory.  Cento is in province of Ferrara and hosts a well-known Carnival earlier in the year – it’s twinned with the one in Rio de Janiero!

Lamborghini and Ducati both have their factory’s conveniently located less than 16 miles from Cento and Ferrari only an hour away by car. The industrial North of the country was impressive.

We checked into a local hotel run by an older couple who serve the best food this side of Modena.  Italian style was everywhere to be seen, from the hotel décor to the very well-dressed factory employees, and from that moment on we knew we were well and truly in the heart of Italy.

First we started the day Italian style by having a coffee from something that can only be described as a vending machine which dispatches coffee in shot glass style containers.  As this was some of the best (and strongest) coffee we have ever experienced and from a vending machine made it even more impressive.

In typical Italian fashion Baltur burners are made with passion, technique and quality resulting in a reliable,  and an efficient product. With 65 years of experience making burners they have been producing burners almost as long as our family business has been in the heating industry!

The specialist burner training course covered the full range of forced draught gas burners ranging from the smaller burners to the larger progressive and modulating two stage burners right up to the larger output burners with 8Mw heat outputs which we frequently service and commission.

The Baltur and EOGB technical engineers are great at allowing our engineers to work on the gas controls and burners in a real life scenarios on live systems which enabled us to set up the electronic multistage combustion managers within the burner controls and to commissioning the newer efficient inverter controlled combustion air fans within the burners. Having this additional knowledge base in out tool kit, will allow us to better serve our clients with an effective, efficient service.

Once each day’s training was over, we had a chance to sample more food (& drink) and enjoy the 40° degrees’ temperatures experienced the week we were out there while trying to remember we’re not on holiday!

Anthony our engineer vs large commercial burner

At the week’s end, looking considerably more tanned than when we arrived, we were treated to a tour of the Ducati factory – seeing these bikes in production all hand-made was brilliant.  Each engine is hand built by the same engine builder and assigned to them throughout the process.

Anthony commissioning commercial gas burners in Italy

So we made the journey back home to the UK with this additional training & experience courtesy of EOGG and Baltur, ready to put our knowledge into practice, to better service our customers in the UK.