The
identikit of the Bologna company leaders in the design and manufacturing of
gears and crucial components and that sell all over the world thanks to
innovation, technology and, most of all, people. “You
can have the best machinery and design software in the world, but they are
useless without the trusted people involved». For Fare Insieme, Giampaolo
Colletti interviewed Gabriele Bonfiglioli, CEO of Marzocchi Pompe
di Giampaolo Colletti
@gpcolletti
When one
door closes, another big one opens. Popular wisdom explains the birth of
Marzocchi better than anything else. It was 1949 when two brothers, Stefano and
Guglielmo, very close and highly-talented workers, figures of reference for the
technical section of an iconic brand such as Ducati, decided to leave the
company to establish their own. It was an important step to make at the time.
Of course, it took courage and a good dose of audacity and maybe even
recklessness, but the two brothers were convinced of what they were about to do
because they wanted to achieve something more: there was the will to launch
into a historic period when Italy wanted to emerge from the Post-war rubble,
into the time of reconstruction. “There was that entrepreneurial strive to put
our experience at the service of new adventures, they wanted to play their game
and, with hindsight, they made it,” explains Gabriele Bonfiglioli, CEO of
Marzocchi Pompe, a company that has reached its third generation specializing
in the production of pumps and external gear motors for industrial
applications, mobile and the automotive sector. There is still something
that has remained unchanged of the typical Emilian excellence of their origins,
characterized by the internal manufacturing of gears and crucial components:
the desire to accomplish and the centrality of human capital. “You can have the best machinery and
design software in the world, but they are useless without the trusted people
involved. That is why human resources are key,” stresses Bonfiglioli. The
headquarters are located in Zola Pedrosa where we also find the production
facility, while the historic factory is in Casalecchio di Reno, both a stone's
throw from Bologna. The company recorded a turnover of €40 million in 2019,
which it managed to exceed in 2021 after a lower 2020 due to the pandemic,
doubling its turnover in six years. Then
there is the human capital and the relative global positioning: Marzocchi,
which boast 250 employees and is constantly growing, has an international
vocation, with a share linked to the domestic market of around 30%. The US
dominates the foreign market share with 30%, followed by Europe with 25% and
Asia with 15%. A globetrotting company because it is indeed Italian, but it has
two branches abroad - Marzocchi Pumps USA, a 100% subsidiary located in Elgin,
near Chicago and charged with taking care of the US market, which is among the
most important in the world, and Marzocchi Symbridge, a 45% joint-venture
subsidiary located in Shanghai. There is also a part-owned company in San
Giovanni in Persiceto, Montirone, in charge of the die casting of crucial
aluminium components.
The scalability of technology. Innovation
and technology are closely related. “Ours is a company that has always been and
aims at continuing to be innovative on the market with new and different
products. Elika is the parallel range that, instead of traditional gears, uses
helical rotors covered by two international patents. It is a highly efficient
low-noise product, therefore a pump that can be employed in fields increasingly
oriented towards the green revolution, because nowadays noise is considered a
pollution factor too,” stressed Bonfiglioli. So Elika is chosen e.g. for
forklift trucks because it reduces noise. But innovation is also found in the
technology linked to production and in the search for efficiency when it comes
to automation. We have always tried to be innovative to compete with companies
from all over the world that employ cheap labour. A lively market also pushes
towards important, brave and necessary choices. So this historic company from
Bologna also entered the Stock Market. “There is a reason that led to this
decision. Ours is a capital intensive
company and we need to invest a lot to keep up with the times. So we have
looked for an alternative source to traditional bank loans. But there is more -
as an Italian small-medium business, we are used to working with companies that
are usually much larger than us, multinationals operating all over the world.
At times, the market and clients wanted to understand fully how we managed to
guarantee financial and asset solidity. Being listed on the market was thus a
marketing and positioning tool, for the purpose of transparency,” explains
Bonfiglioli. Advanced research is vital and entails investments of around 3%,
but which vary every year. Then there is also the alliance with the Engineering
Faculty at the University of Bologna: this collaboration led to the two patents
mentioned above.
Tailor-made work. In order to intercept increasingly-aware clients, you need to have
state-of-the-art products: efficient and at the right price. “I believe it is
essential to work closely with clients especially during two phases: design and
production. Our competitors include giants, but large companies have a smaller
range. Ours is instead almost tailor-made, personalised. Our catalogue includes
over 16 thousand finished product with over 800 active clients: we are always
listening to clients. This is a distinctive trait during planning, as we try to
find the technical solution most suitable to client needs, but also during the
production phase, as it means the number of batches required presents no
problem. There are large businesses that manufacture a high volume of pumps a
year with the same code, while our batches can include as little as one single
pump to adapt to the various requests. It is not by chance that we are defined
as the tailors of gear pumps,” stressed Bonfiglioli. This distinctive
flexibility becomes an agility that makes the difference in competitive
markets. It is the practical demonstration of how David can beat Goliath.
https://podcast.confindustriaemilia.it/
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