Maccaferri

Maccaferri
Private
Industry Civil Engineering
Founded 1879
Headquarters Zola Predosa (BO), Italy
Key people
 Alessandro Maccaferri (Chairman),
Luigi Penzo (Vice-Chairman),
Andrea Marazzi (CEO)
Revenue €503 million (2015)[1]
Number of employees
 ~2.834(As of 2015)
Website www.maccaferri.com

Officine Maccaferri SpA (Maccaferri) is an Italian, family-owned multinational company. The company is specialised in products and solutions for the construction industry. It is 100% owned by the Maccaferri family and has headquarters in Zola Predosa, Bologna, Italy. Maccaferri’s solutions are used for: retaining structures, soil reinforcement, embankment stabilisation, river and canal hydraulic works, coastal protection, erosion control, rockfall mitigation, debris flows and avalanche protection. The company provides technical support to designers, contractors and end-users. The 2015 consolidated revenues of Maccaferri were €503M.[2]

Maccaferri is a global company with more than 70 subsidiaries, 32 production facilities and nearly 3000 employees.[3]

Maccaferri operates 11 production facilities in ASIAPAC (including China, India, Malaysia and the Philippines), 10 in EMEA (including in Italy, Slovakia, UK, Turkey, Albania and South Africa), 3 in NAFTA (USA and Mexico) and 6 in LATAM (including Brazil, Costa Rica, Peru and Bolivia).

History

The company name can be traced back to the 16th century (the name Maccaferri is a literal translation of ‘he who strikes iron’), when Giovanni (Johannes) “Maccaferri” was registered with the blacksmiths guild. However, to join the guild a person had to be 20 years old. As Johannes was only 14 at the time, the Bologna Senate granted a dispensation and approved his membership on 28 June 1550.[4]

Over 300 years later, on the 3rd May 1879, the Chamber of Commerce in Zola Predosa, Italy, recorded the registration of the workshop (“Officina”) of a certain Raffaele Maccaferri, head of the Maccaferri family at the time. This was based in Gesso, near Lavino.

As a blacksmith, the company of Raffaele Maccaferri manufactured items such as gates, fences, columns, staircases and railings used in the churches, houses and businesses in the Bologna area. Of the two sons of Raffaele, the eldest, Angelo, guided the commercial growth of the business, whilst Luigi was the industrial specialist. He expanded the capacity and introduced technology for wire-drawing into the factory. Soon afterwards the “gabion” was re-invented using wire mesh (gabions had been in existence for millennia prior to this, but had been constructed from natural materials).[5]

The company’s first major project was in 1893 when Maccaferri’s gabions were used to repair a breach in the weir at Casalecchio di Reno. The gabions were simple sack gabions, filled in-situ with rocks.[6]

The same Chamber of Commerce in Zola Predosa also records that the company changed its name to “Raffaele Maccaferri and Sons” in 1895.

At the turn of the century, Maccaferri obtained exclusive rights to the patent for a new, box shaped gabion, designed by the Cremona engineer, Edigio Palvis. Due to its regular shape and dimensions, the box gabion proved more successful than sack gabions as used at the closure of the breach at Caselecchio di Reno[7] at creating retaining structures and river training works [8] which were becoming increasingly important.

In the early 1900’s, Maccaferri began industrialising the technology, and the first branch factories were built in Grenoble and Naples. Key structures built at this time included protection to the River Tiber in Rome in 1906 and alongside the River Arno in 1908 for the National Railway Company.

The company’s first sales catalogue was produced in 1906 and in 1907 the company became “Officine Maccaferri & Pisa”.[9] During the First World War, the metal craftsmanship was paused, whilst wire production was used for the manufacture of barbed wire, bastions and other mesh products for military purposes.

Between the wars, the General Manager, Alessandro Maccaferri recognised the need to reconfigure and expand the company further, with increasing ventures overseas. In 1926, Maccaferri’s gabions were used for embankment protection at the Genale Dam, commissioned by the Somalian Government.

In 1944, during the Second World War the factory in Zola Predosa was destroyed by aerial bombardment. The company was restarted in 1946 under the guidance of Gaetano and Guglielmo Maccaferri, sharing the company leadership. In 1951, Maccaferri opened another factory in Bellizzi (Salerno), building upon the sales successes of the prior years.

The steel wire double twisted steel wire mesh was used in the manufacture of many different products for numerous applications. Galvanising the steel wire with zinc was a standard approach within the wire industry. In the 1950’s and 60’s, to provide a longer design life in more demanding applications, PVC coating was added to the wire to offer a longer design life. This new coating technology was useful when the Reno Mattress was invented soon afterwards; a larger flatter gabion with a smaller mesh size, used for river erosion protection works. Maccaferri’s products were used to reconstruct roads and river banks following the devastating floods in Florence in 1966.

In the ‘70’s, the company opened new factories in Canada (Agincourt, Ontario), USA (Williamsport, Maryland) and, Brazil (Jundiai, Sao Paulo).[10]

Until the early 1990s, the company only supplied solutions using products manufactured from the company’s double twist steel wire hexagonal mesh.

Since the mid-1990s, the company has grown through acquisition and geographical expansion. Growth also included diversification and addition of products to the Maccaferri portfolio, including construction geosynthetics (polymeric materials used within the geotechnical industry), rockfall protection and products for tunneling.[11]

Key acquisitions

Key acquisitions have included: 2006: Linear Composites Ltd (UK based manufacturer of composite polymer ropes and straps) 2006: BMD Texteis Ltda (Brazil based manufacturer of geosynthetic products used in construction, automotive and agriculture industries) 2009: Italdreni S.p.A. (Italy based manufacturer of geosynthetics for drainage and erosion protection) 2010: Elas Geotecnica S.r.L. (Italy based manufacturer of products used in the tunneling excavation industry)

Recent Joint Ventures

Recent Joint Venture have included:

Today

Maccaferri consists of subsidiaries and joint ventures in 70 countries. Countries where there is not a direct Maccaferri company are serviced through distributorships, agencies or joint ventures, enabling near-global coverage for the company. Maccaferri’s products can be classified into four broad segments:

Maccaferri operates in numerous market sectors including, infrastructure, mining, oil and gas, military, agribusiness and environmental protection. Maccaferri’s R&D is coordinated by the Maccaferri Innovation Centre in Bolzano. This company, founded in 2014, manages the R&D activities carried out in Maccaferri locations in Brazil, Malaysia, UK and China.

Corporate Structure

The company was incorporated as a joint stock company (società per azioni) under the laws of the Republic of Italy on May 25, 1920 and is registered # 00795700152 with the Register of Companies of Bologna with registered office at Via J.F. Kennedy, 10, 40069, Zola Predosa (BO), Italy.

Maccaferri is one of a number of companies within the Gruppo Industriale Maccaferri (English: Maccaferri Industrial Group). This group, governed by a holding company SECI S.p.A., includes diverse companies operating in food and agriculture (Eridania Sadam), mechanical engineering (SAMP), tobacco (Manifatture Sigaro Toscano), energy (SECI Energia, Enerray, PowerCrop, Sebigas etc), real estate and biotechnologies. In 2013, the consolidated group had sales revenues of €1,205M, of which €686M was from outside Italy and €519 from within Italy (ref.10). Employees for the group numbered 5,229 in 2013 (ref: 10) and there were 57 industrial plant locations.

Major projects

Significant projects include:

See also

References

  1. ↑ Officine Maccaferri prima bond poi quotazione in borsa
  2. ↑ Fatturato consolidato SECI holding
  3. ↑ Maccaferri rilancia sul mercato russo
  4. ↑ Cento anni di Officine Maccaferri SPA 1879-1979, 1979 OM
  5. ↑ La famiglia che ha messo in gabbia le frane
  6. ↑ La chiusa di Casalecchio tra Otto e Novecento
  7. ↑ Grave rotta del fiume Reno
  8. ↑ Manuela Escaramaeia, “River and Channel Revetments: A Design Manual” published by Thomas Telford Publications London 1998
  9. ↑ Giornale del genio civile Vol60, Istituto Poligrafico dello stato 1922
  10. ↑ Gabbioni Casalecchio diventano globali - Archivio storicio corriere
  11. ↑ La direzione del personale oggi incontri e testimonianze di Pier Francesco Acquaviva e Guido Gaetano Rossi Barattini, Giuffre editore
  12. ↑ Jwaneng-Debswana Mine
  13. ↑ Egnatia Metsovo
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