A journey through the history the Bologna paper company, a leader in packaging solutions. A technological gem with a turnover of €18 million, a 16% growth, 100 employees and a business that extends through Italy, France, Switzerland and Germany. «Boxes need to stand out and the packaging on the shelves is essential. It’s the dress that makes products appealing because it influences decisions and guides choices.” Giampaolo Colletti interviews Antonio and Fabio Bonacini for FARE INSIEME.
di Giampaolo Colletti
@gpcolletti
The avant-garde spirit, the wish to experiment with new solutions
and the healthy obsession with details from the old workshop remain. Even if,
today, that workshop is a technological gem boasting a turnover of €18 million,
a year on year growth of 16% and 100 direct and indirect employees for a
business that is 90% Italian and that also operates in France, Switzerland and
Germany. To think that there were only ten people in the beginning, they have
indeed come a long way. This is Labanti e Nanni. It started as a small printing
house in the Pratello area, in Bologna’s historic city centre. Then there was
the move to Via Segantini and, finally, the arrival in the headquarters that
currently covers 9,000 square metres with 27,000 square metres of adjacent
land. It is located in Anzola dell’Emilia, a town of almost thirteen thousand
inhabitants in the Bologna metropolitan area, part of the Sandoni consortium.
“We are a packaging company and our main market is that of general packaging,
where we need to listen to clients, keep innovating and be continually capable
of amazing. Today, those who operate in multiple sectors obtain the best
results. But the DNA of our company is made up of people. Human resources are
the most important thing. The human capital has an effect on business. You
can’t do anything without a team and, whatever the sector, managing to have a
skilled team with a strong sense of belonging makes the difference,” reports
Fabio Bonacini, CEO and member of the Board of Directors at Labanti e Nanni.
The company produces cases for cosmetics, pharmaceutical products, food,
personal hygiene products and much more, which are sold all over the world.
The journey together. Bonacini senior and junior started this entrepreneurial journey together.
Almost thirty years have passed from the acquisition. An adventure made of many
moments and also of a sort of initial disorientation for the new work. “We
listened to the market, the clients and the people within the company. We tried
to understand the sector we had landed in and, after a lot of studying, we
contributed with strategies that have proved winners,” reminisces Antonio
Bonacini, a mechanical engineer obsessed with amazing yet impossible challenges
who, in 1997, decided to take this step together with his son Fabio and a third
partner, Andrea Fanti, who joined the team in 2009 and contributed with his
experience in the printing sector. It was the beginning of an adventure that
changed the company, maintaining its core made up of craftsmanship and passion
while pushing it towards industrial dynamics. “We set up the workshop making it
as industrial as possible by standardising procedures and focusing on quality
and production efficiency. We now work in three shifts, concentrating on team
building and constantly investing in machinery and facilities. We bet on the
traceability of the production process, which also helps retain clients. We
combine a careful multinational-style management control with the flexibility of
an artisan workshop, which enables us to be agile and alert to what the market
requires. When it comes to some cosmetic products, we used to produce 500 cases
while we now make 50 million,” stresses Fabio Bonacini. A business plan that
has proved a winner. Antonio Bonacini remembers this very well: “The secret to
making it? Focus on creativity and reliability. Clients come to us with an idea
and we try to achieve it, with the awareness that the packaging of a product is
today the product itself. Because it’s the dress that makes it appealing on the
shelf. Packaging starts from the products and reaches a lot more because it’s
capable of influencing purchasing decisions and guiding choices. Packaging on
the shelves is essential. Boxes need to pop out, they need to stand out.”
Packaging with a green heart. Today,
the company diversifies the supply, with a 15% dedicated to paper printing,
e.g. instruction leaflets or catalogues and art magazines. Then there are the
cases made using high-tech machinery and therefore high-performing. “Over the
last eight years, we have invested in machinery that has embellished the
packaging. We can apply varnishes or golden or silver foils that can be printed
and, with the manufacturer of printing machines, we were the first company in
the world to implement the printing technology that uses ink and UV LED lamps.
But, in order to do these things, it's essential to employ the latest
technologies available on the market. We therefore acquired a machine boasting
unique production performances worth €4 million. A machine that guarantees
high-quality and scalability, and therefore a strong competitiveness. All this
means combining quality and competitiveness. Today, the human capital together
with the systems available are capable of meeting the new client needs. But
improvising is forbidden. You need to study, to train - this is what makes the
difference,” stresses Fabio Bonacini. Then there is the element of
sustainability, with the protection
of the environment that passes through raw materials, products and certified
processes. A journey of pioneering, taken up even before there was any talk
about the urgency of environmental challenges. Antonio Bonacini also remembers:
“This evolution, when it comes to plastic, is a great advantage to our sector,
but our company has always been sustainable and circular and we will continue
on this path.” Once again, a company working on multiple fronts takes the field
to win.
https://podcast.confindustriaemilia.it/
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