An electronics company was born in 1978 in
Nonantola, a town of less than twenty thousand souls east of Modena, that over
the years transformed into a multi-business reality oriented towards
innovation. It all started from a garage, which however was always open to the
whole world. For FARE INSIEME, Giampaolo Colletti interviews Giampaolo Ferranti,
CFO of GRAF Industries
of Giampaolo Colletti
@gpcolletti
Photocredit: Giacomo Maestri e Francesca Aufiero
Always believe, never give
up. If we were to use a slogan to tell the story of GRAF Industries, this could
be it. A call to resilience, determination, innovation that is inextricably
linked to experimentation. Because the story of this multi-business company
encompasses many others, all linked by that mantra: always believe, never give
up. It all started from a garage, exactly like the iconic American ones that we
have also learned to read about in the contemporary history books of recent
innovation. In this case, however, the garage was located in Nonantola, a town
of almost seventeen thousand souls in the Emilia hinterland east of Modena and
in the direction of Ferrara, along the road known to most as Nonantolana, i.e.
the Provincial Road 255. A town known worldwide for its beautiful abbey, which
during the Middle Ages even became the seat of one of the most important and
richest monasteries in Europe. A land oriented towards innovation, teamwork,and
ability to create a system and to scale markets and attention.
A
story of innovation. With GRAF it all started back in 1978 right from
that garage in via Cesare Battisti where Paride Ferranti started his first
activities. It was a small company of electrical systems, which also supplied
electronics and software for industrial automation. In the previous decades,
this forerunner start-upper had found a booklet from the Scuola Radio Elettra,
a company engaged in providing correspondence training courses in the field of
electronics, and so it had begun to study electrical systems. Paride Ferranti studied a lot, non-stop. And he experimented even
more. His were the most innovative solutions at the time, such as the replica
of the electric gas lighter. Then the move to Switzerland, the experience in
Africa and the return to Emilia. «Basically we were born as electronic engineers, but
from the very beginning we were innovators by definition. We have gone as far
as the most advanced automation thanks to electronics. On the other hand, our
territory is famous for its industriousness: here we have always breathed a
technological atmosphere», says Giampaolo Ferranti, CFO of the company that
has revolutionised various businesses, betting on research and innovation. And
it is no coincidence that investments in R&D are still around 7% of
turnover today. But let's proceed with order. GRAF is an acronym that includes
the partners of the new corporate phase and stands for Guerra, Reggiani, Ansaloni, Ferranti. Because the story continues
in 1994 when a group of ingenious entrepreneurs took up the legacy of an
already visionary company to give life to a specialisation boost in the design
and creation of automation lines for the most diverse business areas: from the
ceramic sector to the metalworking sector. Multi-business,
we said before. Meanwhile, in more recent years, i.e. around 2002, the research
and development activity of GRAF strengthened and a real laboratory was
created, which obtained the important recognition of highly qualified
laboratory from the Ministry of Education, University and Research, thus giving
the possibility to customers, commissioning specific activities, to obtain
significant reductions in terms of costs and guarantees on scientific quality.
Then comes the 2008 financial crisis. After Lehman Brothers, the company lost
70% of its turnover and decided to rethink itself as a manufacturing company. «It was a
crisis that hit the productive fabric and some of our main customers hard. Our
board found itself in the difficult position of having to decide between
cutting dramatically on personnel or further investing in a challenging
corporate acquisition. The decision taken to protect employees was the second.
The strong drive towards innovation and the ability to seize the opportunities
offered by the market led over time to the development of further business
units and to the identification of such specialised centres of expertise as to
be an attractive resource for companies as well, outside of the group», recalls
Ferranti. So in 2009 GRAF Synergy was born, which transformed GRAF from
supplier to machine manufacturer.
Disruptive innovations. Always believe,
never give up. More than a slogan. These words are breathed in the
accomplishments of this Emilian company, which today has 300 employees with an
average age of 39 years old, 7 factories and 42,000 square metres of production
area. In 2008, when the world changed, GRAF was a company with a turnover of
less than 10 million euros. Today the turnover is close to 100 million euros.
But what makes the difference is thinking out-of-the-box. To innovate and
innovate oneself. Thus, in 2012 GRAF was the first to introduce a hitherto
unknown technology onto the market, which was to revolutionise the production
process of PVC windows: in fact, it manufactured the first and only CNC welding
machine in the world in-house, which completely eliminated the weld bead from
the corner of the window. This technology made it possible to create windows
with an aesthetic effect never seen before and allowed window manufacturers to
produce new types of windows with combinations of materials hitherto considered
impossible to produce at low cost. Within a few years the new technology proved
to be disruptive and today GRAF is the reference player in the world. «This
extraordinary result is the result of the synergistic work of the various
professional skills that can be found within the group and in parallel we are
beginning a manufacturing process of all the components necessary for the
creation of fuel dispensers for methane gas. Thanks to the experience in the
field and the commitment of our internal researchers, we have created the most
complete range of products, becoming the best performing player in the sector», says
Ferranti. The lesson that comes from this reality is that of having transformed
problems into opportunities. «We realised in time that the world of mechanics had
changed and electronics had evolved, moving towards precision. All this allowed
us to create new machinery, especially for numerical control machines», concludes Ferranti. What’s next? The
evolution of numerical control machines as well as new industrial solutions for
the exploitation of alternative and sustainable energy sources, such as biogas,
LNG, hydrogen and photovoltaics, are already today the guidelines of GRAF for
tomorrow. The acumen of the
future: what a great skill!
https://podcast.confindustriaemilia.it/
Read the other interviews
