CERÂMICA SANTANA SA.

Did you read in the April, 1990 issue of CROWN JEWELS that I was hot on the trail of more information on the Santana Ceramic Factory in Brazil? Well, one of my guardian angels (I need several) got wind of this and it wasn't long before I received a large brown envelope in the mail. It contained a Xerox copy of Santana's current catalog and a letter from Mark A. Miner of Longmont, Colorado. I quote in part from that letter:

Dear Marilyn,

The information enclosed might just make your day. I don't know if this company has been reported yet, but if it hasn't, it probably will need some new U- numbers assigned. 

The company is Ceramica Santana SA. or just plain Santana. Through Santana's sales office in Miami, I was able to obtain a complete catalog of their insulator products. The utility I work for is evaluating some of their products for possible use by our organization. The sales office also provided me with a list of customers in the U.S. and Canada, and what styles of insulators they have ordered. The list is quite impressive -- city of Los Angeles, P.S. of New Mexico, Consolidated Edison, etc. 

The catalog shows a complete range of insulators from small one groove telephone knobs to substation insulators rated up to 800Kv. The catalog does not state what type of marking is used on their insulators. However, by looking at various pictures throughout the catalog, it appears like an under-glaze (ink) marking - SANTANA. Should you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me or the sales representative in Miami.

Thanks, MARK A. MINER

Mark was right. It did make my day! In fact, I wore a big smile for several days because one of my greatest pleasures is to find missing puzzle pieces. It just so happens that I have three Santana insulators in my collection and it's great to learn something of their background. Two of them came from a dealer in the state of Washington and the third was the result of a trade with a collector right here in Texas. These insulators are shown in the photos which follow along with the Santana trademark, which also indicates the date of manufacture.

Ceramica Santana Trademark
M-2326 (similar) SANTANA 88-Brasil
U-2767 (similar)  SANTANA  84-Brasil
	No U-Number  SANTANA  84-Brasil

My information on the company's history is not really complete at this time, but I have written Santana's Miami sales office to see if they can help out here. The catalog names the city of Pedreira for the location of the main office and shows aerial views of the company's two plants. There is no indication that either of these is located anywhere else, so it may be safe to assume that they are both in Pedreira. This city is about 150 miles inland from the Atlantic seaport of Sao Luis along Brazil's northern coastline. The many rivers in this country provide thousands of miles of navigable waterways, so l don't imagine those 150 miles present too much of a problem when it comes to shipping insulators.

Santana's Plant #1 was established in 1941 and has 800 employees. Its main products are pin, suspension, line post, station post, cap and pin, spool, strain, Multicorpo Santana porcelain insulators and bushings for low, medium and high tension.

Plant #2 was established in 1982 and seems to be smaller, with just 220 employees. Production includes solid core porcelain insulators for station post, line post, porcelain housing for current and potential transformers, circuit breakers, capacitive bushings and lightning arrestors.

Ceramica Santana S.A. claims that it "is the largest producer of porcelain insulators for electrical purposes in the Southern Hemisphere, and one of the biggest in the world, producing more than 10,000 different items of all kinds of insulators for low, medium, high and extra-high tension up to 800 KV (ac/dc).

In terms of production, their Quality Control System is composed of: 

1) The Chemical Ceramics Laboratory, which oversees the incoming raw materials, their treatment and the preparation of the ceramic bodies.

2) The Production Quality Department, which has the primary responsibility of controlling the entire manufacturing process quality, up to the point where the material leaves the kilns and is checked and forwarded for final testing. 

3) The Electro-Mechanical Laboratory, which is in charge of providing final tests of the dielectric and of complete insulators which eventual hardware. The laboratory is equipped to perform tests according to A.B.N.T. (Brazilian Standards), ANSI, I.E.C. (International Standards), DIN (German Standards) and other internationally known standards."

Shown on the following pages area few examples of Santana's pin-type insulators, which would seem to be quite collectible. While none of them appear to be out of the ordinary, they are included here to show the variety of styles available.