A young company that
has become in a few years among the top five in its sector. The leading hub in
Made in Italy ceramics and luxury bathroom furnishings is just sixteen kilometres from Sassuolo. Italcer
has nearly a thousand employees and over 8,000 customers worldwide with eight
active factories. Giampaolo Colletti interviews Graziano Verdi, CEO of Italcer
Group for FARE INSIEME
di Giampaolo Colletti
@gpcolletti
«If it were a football match, we could
say without a shadow of a doubt that human capital beats technology because
without the former the latter would fail. Technology makes it possible to
transfer all innovation in a competitive form, but it is the people who make
the difference.» Graziano Verdi, CEO of Italcer,
with thirty-two years of experience in GranitiFiandre and a small interlude as
head of the company at Technogym, repeats it to me like a mantra; he figured as
the youngest company manager in GranitiFiandre until he took the helm in 1992.
And then continuing a path abroad as CEO in the Koramic conglomerate until his
return to Italy in 2017 with an adventure that might seem like a gamble, but
which for now has turned out to be a successful case, studied in Italy and
abroad. Basically, in this very current dualism between human capital and
technological capital, we can also see the success of Italcer, which was
established only five years ago, but which already occupies a leading position
in that area of excellence linked to ceramics.
People
first. First the people and then the machines.
This is a story that starts from the people because this bet was born under the
sign of alliances. On the other hand, the idea of Italcer Group lies entirely
in an intuition set up in a few months. «We started from zero in mid-2017 and
today we figure as one of the top five Italian groups and with significant
growth prospects in a sector that is still very fragmented today», explains
Verdi. But the industrial district also plays a leading role in this story. And
precisely that of ceramics. An industry that the whole world envies us. And
then we can say that the best insights can turn out to be winning thanks to
people, but also to an innovative context. We are in Rubiera, a town of fifteen
thousand souls in the province of Reggio Emilia and only sixteen kilometres
from Sassuolo, considered as the world capital of ceramics. Here Italcer comes
to life, a design hub in Made in Italy ceramics and luxury bathroom
furnishings. Today the company has nearly a thousand employees, consolidated
revenues of over 260 million euros in 2021 and projected to over 300 in 2022
and a hundred projects carried out for over 8,000 customers worldwide. There
are eight active factories, five in Italy and three abroad. Team play, as we
said before, is crucial: Italcer works with high-end brands and historical
industrial realities in the ceramic sector. Companies that produce excellent
products for interiors and exteriors: La Fabbrica Ceramiche, Elios Ceramica,
Devon & Devon, Ceramica Rondine, Cedir, Bottega ed Equipe Cerámicas, to
name but a few. «We have tried to acquire companies that that could complement
each other in terms of format and product. And we have tried to specialise each
reality while maintaining and developing the strengths of each brand. We
started in June 2017 thanks to Alberto Forchielli, founder and president of
Mindful Capital Partners and our main shareholder. We went forwards one step at
a time, growing organically, expanding the perimeter of the acquisitions and
relying on innovation and design, on the environmental awareness and concern
for the people and managing to make the first cross border from the Sassuolo
industrial district to the Spanish one with the acquisition of Equipe
Cerámicas, the world leader in extra small formats. When you are caring towards
your colleagues, you enjoy the benefit that they are with you at all times,
they act quickly and aim for excellence. Throughout the group, people have
started responding to customers flawlessly right from the start. And this has
allowed us to grow», Verdi recalls. Here then is the formula for the success of
the company, which comes from the success of people. From their satisfaction.
The recipes to compete. Design and
sustainability. Easy to say, harder to do. But if you decide to invest in
research and development - Italcer currently has over 600 projects, with a
total investment of 4.2 million euros for the efficient use of materials and
energy saving - then things can really happen. Thus, the company searches for
natural raw materials having a lower environmental impact. Even more so. The
company even uses over 50% of recycled raw materials. And already today it is
possible to recycle and recover more than 99% of the production waste generated
in the various production sites. The production lines are equipped with the
latest technological innovations. «We were the first factory in the sector to
install a new press equipped with innovative solutions in the hydraulic circuit
in August 2021. Objective: to optimise and speed up each production phase with
the lowest energy consumption. But we have also invested 7 million euros in a
new combined heat and power (CHP) system and all this allows us to almost
eliminate the consumption of electricity in the preparation of the mixtures»,
says Verdi. Always innovate, never stop, as whoever stops is lost. Thus, ADVANCE
was introduced in June 2020: it can be described as an antibacterial material
that, thanks to a patented process of biomimetics, reduces viruses, bacteria
and pollution by 20%. «Ever since we set up Italcer we thought that to be
attractive and competitive we had to bet on the quality of the product. The aesthetic
beauty of our ceramic product remains intact and is integrated with the
strength of hygiene», Verdi proudly specifies. Again, the work comes from the
team: R&D and the Italian and American Universities (https://www.advanceceramic.it/).
But how important is the industrial district today?
How has it changed over time and how does it exploit the levers of digital
transformation? Verdi has no doubts. «There are important values in the
industrial district. Michael Porter, in one of his marketing texts, cites the
Sassuolo district as an example of competitiveness. After all, we have such a
concentrated industrial area here that it facilitates logistics, simplifies the
distribution and procurement, and a competitive advantage is registered.» Doing
business, however, also means reading the signs of weakness of one's time and
acting quickly. «We changed the recipes of the ceramic mixture and learned to
do without the clays imported from Ukraine, which were blocked due to the
current war. In the district we have two million tons of clays to replace and
we are managing», concludes Verdi. Here then are the pioneers: deep roots,
which are anchored in their communities, but with the ability, however, to
grasp the signals of change and adapt to the new circumstances.
https://podcast.confindustriaemilia.it/
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