From a small provincial printing house, no
bigger than Steve Jobs' garage, to a leading international food-packaging
giant. Today the Fabbri Group employs 500 people and has a turnover of €113
million, a year-on-year increase of +15%. Giampaolo Colletti interviews Stefano
Mele, CEO of the Fabbri Group, for FARE INSIEME
of Giampaolo Colletti
@gpcolletti
Photocredit: Giacomo Maestri e Francesca Aufiero
Business success stories all have similar
ingredients. These are simple, almost to the point of being trivial, but they
are nonetheless difficult to pursue. Among other qualities, we could mention
genius, the ability to work together with energy from the community, and
stubbornness—“resilience” in management jargon—, i.e. the strength to stay the
course. Yet these stories also have very specific identity traits. An example
would be this small printing house in Modena that managed to move from
traditional paper printing to film for foodstuffs, becoming a world leader in
the production and sale of stretch and barrier films, wrapping machines and
heat sealers to pack fresh and very fresh produce. The story we are about to
tell starts at a provincial printing house, not much bigger than Steve Jobs'
garage, where in the early post-war period the first flexographic and
rotogravure rotary press for packaging fruit and citrus was created. This was
the start of food packaging. So began the business that would become a global
giant over the years in the manufacture and sale of machines and complete
lines, films, and software for food packaging. Welcome to the Fabbri Group,
best summed up by our motto: The
evolution of freshness.
Market and consumption.
The company now employs 500 people and has a turnover of €113 million, an
increase of +15% compared to previous years. The headquarters is still in
Vignola, but there are also two factories in Palazzolo sull'Oglio and Muzzano,
in the Canton of Ticino, Lugano district. And then there are the technical and
commercial offices abroad: Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and
Russia. "What we do can now be best summed up by the slogan ‘Preserving
without wasting’. We pay close attention to the development of packaging
systems that allow our customers to preserve fresh produce: meat, fish, fruit,
vegetables, etc. We have always tried to incorporate innovation. We operate
with fresh food processors and retail with solutions that cover all food
industries and are committed to providing safe, competitive and effective
products for satisfactory food preservation, investing in innovative solutions
aimed at continuous improvement in sustainability performance", says
Stefano Mele, CEO of Fabbri Group. The key is to lead by getting a feel for the
evolution of the market, the new needs of a changing society and industry
innovations. "Our strategy has always been to adapt to the needs of the
market, to be very careful to capture the innovations that may be needed at any
given time. This is how we became a European benchmark that is active on a
global scale, but continuous innovation also lies at the heart of our
transition from a family business to a large business". Growing, but doing
it consciously. This is the essential trait of the best business leaders.
The history of what would become the future. But why not step
back and take a closer look at that small printing house in Vignola? It was
taken over by Ennio Fabbri in the 1930s and became the headquarters of his
son—the genius Ermanno Fabbri—, who went on to make it into something unique.
Ermanno Fabbri, without asking anyone’s permission—as only the best innovators
can—began developing food packaging solutions in the 1950s, right after the
war, when resources were particularly scarce and were, then as now, preserved
without waste. This is how Fabbri Graphic Arts (Fabbri Arti Grafiche) was born.
This was followed by a lot of research and development and the registration of
the first patents. Over the years, Fabbri has managed to ride the most
significant market trends, providing customers with the best solutions. In
1960, Ermanno Fabbri founded Automac and launched the first machine to
automatically wrap citrus fruits with special waxed paper. Hence the current
Fabbri strategy was born, which is based on the integrated synergy between
machines and films. The goal is to provide the market with a complete food
packaging system including packaging and consumables. In the 1970s, Automac
applied cold-extendable PVC film for the automatic wrapping of fresh produce
for supermarkets. This gave rise to another small but important revolution. As
a result, Fabbri Group began to stand out in the world market for the
development of innovative technologies and materials in the field of packaging.
The wrapping sector has continued to develop over the decades, leading to
integrated wrapping machines with weighing and labeling systems, up to thermal
sealing. “Sustainability is on everyone's lips today, but ‘preserving without
wasting’ has always been our motto. In response to new, pressing market and
institutional demands, we have, in recent years, focused on new and significant
innovation projects with a large investment of resources. In short, we have
tried to predict the future with a major investment in light packaging, using
as little plastic as possible". In this manner, Fabbri invests
approximately 5% of its annual turnover in R&D. Tradition and innovation:
two sides of the same coin. "We now control the global market with a
network of more than 90 authorized distributors and service centers, but we
will always be grateful and proud of the land where we were born and where all
this started".
https://podcast.confindustriaemilia.it/
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