A machine shop was born in Bologna as far as 1927 that over
the years would become excellence in contract services, building from
industrial machines to telescopes and mechanical components. Today, 95 years
following its foundation, Meccanica Sarti has a turnover of 7 million euros,
employs about fifty people and looks to the future. Giampaolo Colletti
interviews Stefano
Sarti, chairman of Meccanica Sartifor FARE INSIEME
di Giampaolo Colletti
@gpcolletti
Photocredit: Giacomo Maestri e Francesca Aufiero
This is a
story of perseverance, dedication, passion. But it is also a story that links
the study to unpredictability. Because from a small machine shop equipped with
a lathe, milling machine and drill one can evolve into something much more, up
to the point of admiring the stars and celestial bodies. But let's proceed with
order. It all started in 1927 in the Pietro Sarti Machine shop. The owner of
that atelier, Pietro Sarti, was someone who was knowledgeable of precision
mechanics because thirteen years earlier he had obtained a qualification
diploma by attending courses at the prestigious Instituto Aldini-Valeriani in
Bologna. A qualification that was then the privilege of a few. «My grandfather
Pietro came from Argenta and after the war he opened a workshop to build parts
for third parties. Over time the company grew, the lathes became two and the
employees increased», recalls Stefano Sarti, chairman of Meccanica Sarti. Today the
company, which was established near the Sant’Orsola Hospital in Bologna, has a
turnover of 7 million euros and employs 48 people.
The evolution of the business. In this
way the workshop becomes something else: in the early 1950s, when Pietro's son
Luciano Sarti joined the company, the first telescopes and equipment for the
laboratories of the sugar refineries began to be built. Two very different
items, but with one element in common: the healthy obsession with doing things
at their best. What a genius Luciano Sarti was, who today we would define as a
successful start-upper and who was even mentioned in the monograph of the
Astronomical Observatory of Padua on the occasion of the inauguration of its
telescope: “The entire mechanical mount was designed by our technicians and
built piece by piece at Meccanica Sarti in Bologna, which had already proven
its ability and experience in the construction of the two Schmidt telescopes.
It was not an easy task, each part had to be designed, discussed, modified by
our astronomers and technicians and by those, no less skilled, of Meccanica
Sarti and opinions were sometimes conflicting. Ultimately, however, a truly
excellent result was achieved. The telescope you see here in front of you has
already been tested in the sky and the exceptional qualities of robustness are
combined to the precision of the movements, the docility of manoeuvre and the
accuracy of pointing.” You got it right: precision, docility, robustness. The
synthesis of a job well done. Then, with the crisis in the sugar industry and
the uncertainty of funding for astronomy, a company reconversion began in the
mid-seventies and it was decided to bet on the then nascent technology of
numerical control applied to machine tools. A bet that turned out to be
winning. In the early nineties the company began a reorganisation process
extended to all sectors: the company grew, with the third and fourth generation
working together, bringing the foreign turnover to over 60% towards Europe, the
United States and China.
A continuous laboratory. Technologies and
people. Especially people. Because if there is one thing that emerges from
Meccanica Sarti it is this ability to do things together. «If we have grown and
if we have improved our product and quality of our service, we owe it to our
customers who, with their trust and appreciation, have been an incentive to
continue improving. And we owe it to our collaborators, because being a team
allows us to guarantee the safety of a reliable partner and at the same time
face new and increasingly important challenges», Sarti explains. Today the company is dedicated to the production of
mechanical components, usually obtained from castings and metalwork. Meccanica
Sarti manages the entire supply chain necessary for the realisation of new
projects, from modelling to casting, from mechanical processing and testing to
any subsequent treatments, the production of components for packaging machines,
the supports for industrial pumps, the elements for the construction of robots.
As well as textile machine supports and industrial filter housings.
Technologies and people, we said before. And people make a difference. In
summary, the most beautiful telescopes made in Italy were born with this
Emilian family and still today Meccanica Sarti is linked to those of Asiago,
Catania and Medicina, near Bologna. «We have made prototypes, research,
continuous tests. I remember as a child a very young Margherita Hack with my
dad», concludes Sarti. Our desire to do and to go far was always very strong.
Even Hack repeated it. “It is so beautiful to stare at the sky and realise how
it is nothing more than a real immense laboratory that develops and unfolds on
our heads”.
https://podcast.confindustriaemilia.it/
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