< Previous| 18 | Manufacturing-Journal Finlogic Spa in numbersEvaluating company’s success, the num-bers speak for themselves. Last year closed with the impressive number of more than 21mln€ turnover in 2017. The company has 50 production lines that are divided in two plants placed in Acquaviva delle Fonti (Bari) and Bollate (Milan) with the respective commer-cial and administrative offices in addi-tion to the main commercial office in Rome. The acquisition of 4 companies that took place in the last 12 months has allowed Finlogic Spa to acquire new offices in Turin, Florence, and Monza Brianza and to expand the product portfolio and the opportunities it of-fers such as the introduction of mobile software, customized for the logistics, printers for textile labels and in-house production of the printing systems.Back in time to the beginningsLet’s get back to 1993, a very important year for Finlogic Spa, because in that year Vincenzo Battista, currently its ma-jor shareholder, began the production and marketing activities of the labels in the province of Bari through the com-pany called Italcode Srl. After 10 years of operating under the name Italcode Srl, Finlogic Spa has been established and has inherited all the activities carried out by Italcode and till this day the company is operating in the field of automatic identification and labelling systems.MilestonesSince 2003 Finlogic Spa has the renown in the market for being the major manu-facturer of the labels and the distribu-tor of the product barcodes and over the years has been able to significantly FACT BOX‘Made in Italy’ leader in labelling and barcode solutions Listed on the stock exchange by June 2017, Finlogic Spa is a leading company in the Italian market for the production of labels and automatic identification systems at 360°. Silvia Tittozzi (Head of Marketing at Finlogic) is making us familiar with the company’s beginnings, portfolio, present position and the impact it is making, plans to become the player in the European market and all the other important matters about the company.FULL NAME: CHAIRMAN & MANAGING DIRECTOR: INDUSTRY: ESTABLISHED: EMPLOYEES: TURNOVER: Finlogic SpaConstantino NatalePackaging - production of labels200313021mln€ (2017)www.finlogic.itARTICLES | Packaging - production of labelsFinlogicCEODino NataleManufacturing-Journal | 19 |increase its productivity by building its success on the professionalism and proven experience. The same year the internet website www.id-label.com has been activated. From the very beginning it has been the innovative marketing tool owned by Finlogic and nowadays it is still active and also unique in the sector, allowing resellers to do quotes of plain printed labels in full autonomy (also of blank labels). In 2008 the com-pany was awarded with the ‘Oscar of the packaging field’ for the presentation of an absolute novelty in the market of labelling: the label on multimaterial. In July 2010 Finlogic Spa has become a dis-tributor of brand products - SATO Italy, manufacturer of the international di-mension of thermal transfer printers. In April 2012 the company has become the part of the Elite project of Borsa Italiana and after two years of operating it has began the process of growth.Important acquisitionsThe first one that has made a huge im-pact on the company’s portfolio was ac-quired in 2014 Idlog Srl (51% owned), a software house specialising in systems for the printing and reading of the bar-codes. The main purpose of the acqui-sition was to integrate and expand the offer of services in the segment of the traceability of the products. The technol-ogy that it is using is called RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) which permits to remotely trace objects, animals or even people with a help of the internal microchip or via micro-antenna. In 2016 Finlogic Spa decided to broaden and diversify the range of products offered with the acquisition of a business branch of Primetec Srl, specialized in the sale and technical support of digital printing technologies, colour coil, and further enhance its position in the area of Lom-bardy with the acquisition of Fd Code Srl (51% owned) - a small system integrator that specializes in providing solutions for adhesive labels, tablet, barcode read-ers, ribbon and thermal printers. The 9th of June 2017 became the date of big | 20 | Manufacturing-Journal changes for the company. Finlogic Spa put their shares on the Italian Stock Ex-change, raising 6.3 million as a result of the placement intake of 1,750,000 new ordinary shares without nominal value. The unit price of the shares from the moment of placement has been fixed and stands at 3.60 euro. The free float of the company is equal to the 25,93%. On the 13th of July, Hydra Spa (hold-ing company and the parent company of Datalogic Spa) in order to increase the participation that back then was at the level of 2,87%, has acquired 500,000 shares and that move has enabled them to reach a total holding of 10.28% of the share capital of Finlogic Spa. It continues the process of growth by external lines with 4 additional acquisitions complet-ed in January 2018 with the purchase of Tecmark and Multitec, in July 2018 with the purchase of Irideitalia and in Au-gust 2018 with the purchase of Mobile Project. The latest strategic acquisition in December 20.2018: Smart Lab Indus-tries 3D, a company specializing in 3D printing solutions, with which we plan to develop a synergy in the field of in-dustry 4.0 and automatic identification.Successful strategyJoining the Elite project was one of those moments for the company that allowed them to pursue the way of flo-tation on the AIM market, and from there, thanks to capital raised over time, Finlogic Spa has started to rapidly grow both internally and externally. The at-tention has always been directed to-wards the innovation and the evolution of the market. It is the best description of the company’s image that never stops evolving despite successful position gained in the market, continues to look to the future development and sees the key to the further growth in the search of new solutions that meet the require-ments of the constantly changing mar-ket. Successful company needs people that know their job inside out. It’s no dif-ferent in case of Finlogic Spa. The team of graphic designers of the labels keeps an eye on the quality and innovative fea-tures of the products while the produc-tion team is distributed over two plants, one in Acquaviva delle Fonti (Bari) and one at Bollate (Milan), with over 40 pro-duction lines for the labels in roll and in sheets.Partners, suppliers and distributionFinlogic Spa is perfectly aware that regu-Manufacturing-Journal | 21 |lar partners and suppliers can only im-prove the business operations therefore once the trust and infallibility is proven to be there, the strong relationship gets maintained for multiple years. Since 2010 the company has been an official distributor of SATO for thermal transfer printers. In recent years the contracts for the distribution have been signed directly with CITIZEN and TOSHIBA TEC. The deal with the second one was the result of the acquisition of Tecmark Ltd in January 2018, which was the official distributor of Toshiba for the Italian mar-ket. For the part of the terminals and readers, Finlogic Spa has a good collab-oration with Opticon, Honeywell, Zebra and Datalogic. That last company leads us to Hydra Spa, the holding company of Datalogic SpA that in July 2017 became a part of the Group Finlogic by purchas-ing 10% of its share capital. When talking about the digital division field, Finlogic Spa is the official distributor of colour printers of such well-known brands as Epson (Best Seller 2018 in Europe), Prim-era and Vip Color Europe. In the context of digital die-cutting system, Finlogic Spa offers the widest range of products, among which stands out the ECLIPSE se-ries, all based on the Summa technology.Outlook for the futureAfter the successful experience of Elite project and landing on AIM Italy, Finlog-ic is ready to conquer increasingly large market shares abroad. The main focus of the company’s business activity will always remain on the Italian market, but it is important to put more stress on the international growth strategy and it is al-ready happening. Finlogic Spa is looking forward to strong interest from abroad and for the time being the main coun-tries of interest - when talking about the business expansion - are the neighbour-ing countries and those not very distant from Italy. To facilitate the whole pro-cess, the company decided to strength-en the management structure and hired an export manager to expand at the European level and an account man-ager, Mariarita Marabello, who holds a decade of experience in the industry to have held the role of Channel Account Manager Iberia & Supplies Specialist for Zebra Technologies for Spain and UK. Written by Anna Wąsowicz-Senne| 22 | Manufacturing-Journal Company historyFERRARO GROUP is born from the merg-er of LMF and INDUSTRIE FERRARO, both leading companies on the market for over 30 years, guaranteeing a complete and reliable support for what is not sim-ply a component but an essential ele-ment of the product and / or installation provided to the end user. In 1980 Mr. Ferraro started the activity, and all the family (including the sons Mauro and Enzo) was involved. At the beginning was principally a craftsman, working on light metalwork processes, and cop-per tube construction for the heating industry. After a few years the company began working with turned brass com-pany, and this was a keypoint of the life of the company. Another keypoint came in 1990 the company created two main core businesses, having two main sepa-rate productive entities (although in the same facility):“LMF” and “IF Industrie Ferraro”, allowing the group to develop separately and branch out into the dif-ferent areas of the HVAC. - “LMF” started production of water exchanger, ventila-tion boxes, heat recovery units and air handling units., while IF continued the previous activity in piping production, getting the ISO 9002 certificate at earlies nineties In 2006 Mr. Ferraro left the com-FACT BOXFERRARO GROUP - One unique group, many professionalsFerraro Group has been operating for twenty years with the most advanced technologies in liquid and gaseous fluids run, producing components for heating, air conditioning, refrigera-tion and automation as well as in the air handling units.FULL NAME: CHAIRMAN: INDUSTRY: ESTABLISHED: EMPLOYEES: TURNOVER: FERRARO GROUP S.P.A.Mauro FerraroHVAC1980About 200 (Ferraro Group)25 mln eurowww.ferrarogroup.euARTICLES | HVACFERRARO GROUPManufacturing-Journal | 23 |pany to his sons, Mauro and Enzo, and the “FERRARO GROUP” was born (merg-ing “IF Industrie Ferraro” and LMF).The company is still in their hands. After a while they founded RAME Cz, a compa-ny settled in the Czech Republic, which still copper and aluminum piping for the East European heating market. The key of the success for all these companies was always the capability to adapt to the needing of the market and the client satisfactionDesign and ProductionFERRARO GROUP sums up its many years of experience in the air treat-ment sector of LMF and in the heating sector of INDUSTRIE FERRARO, historic companies in the HVAC panorama. The activity of FERRARO GROUP is divided into 3 business units: Piping, Tanks, and LMF CLIMA. Concerning metal sheet, our production has a powerful machine tool, Salvagnini branded, which is ro-botized and can work up to 24hours per day with automatic load of panels, punching cutting and bending, for the final product – the manpower includes 30 skilled workers for the division LMF clima. The piping relies on 16 computer aided lathes (Tornio) and more than 70 people for the production and customer | 24 | Manufacturing-Journal service, plus the additional 100 workers in Czech Republic. Everyone is working according the ISO 9002 directive, which was achieved every year by now.MarketsParticular attention to customer needs and a personalized service guarantee the widest availability and the best sup-port in the pre and post-sales phase. The company started initially focusing more on OEM production, and this soul was kept during all the years. In a parallel way, during the life, the company any-how developed its own sales network, mainly in Europe, which nowadays is bigger than production of others. Italy represents good part of the market, although the biggest ones are Nether-lands, France, UK. East Europe is going to be developed and Ferraro Group is pre-sent with piping only, at the moment. The reason why the biggest markets are in Europe is for the high quality of the product which are provided. The futureA production always at the highest levels, strongly oriented towards tech-nology and innovation in terms of equipment and industrial process; state-of-the-art production facilities and spe-cialized personnel are the foundation with which FERRARO GROUP meets the increasingly specific needs of the heat-ing, air conditioning, air treatment and professional component markets. The development of the market is moving to the East Europe and north Africa coun-tries, which are caring about the quality more and more during the years. The production is now ready for a wide im-provement for all the investments that were done during the years, so LMF thinks that in next 3 years the business volume will become at least 50% more than the actual one.ConclusionsCorporate dynamism, continuous stud-ies, research and development of new applications, suitable for improving and trying to solve the problems created by climate change. In working and meeting environments, we focus on monitoring the needs of the market in order to an-ticipate future developments and the demands of the market itself, as we have done in the past (and we succeeded with our range of heat pumps products HP + heat).Manufacturing-Journal | 25 |Company overviewReady Bathroom was founded by Łukasz Załucki and Jan Grivalský as a company manufacturing bathrooms for the Danish market, initially at a small capacity of one thousand units per year. This was possible thanks a very experienced in this market - Niels Sandahl who had a very successful and experienced team of designers and sales manager on the Danish market. Denmark has for many years now been one of the world’s leader in implementing prefabricated construction, for example in student and senior housing projects and hotels. The 9000m2 manufacturing plant in Legnica, in south west of Poland, was established in 2015. Today it em-ploys 300 people. In the late 2016 Ready Bathroom bought out 90% of shares in a Danish company with decade’s worth of experience in the prefabricates industry, positioning itself as a major supplier for the important Danish market, often re-ferred to as the Gateway to Scandinavia. In a couple of years, with their business in Denmark secure and growing (reach-ing 5000 units in the current year), it was now possible to reach out towards other countries, including Germany, England and a successful return to Benelux. “This time we are approaching it fully profes-sionally. We have a local partner in Bel-gium, Filip Walleyn, and a complete Bel-gian team, which includes a designer and a sales expert” said Mr. Załucki, the CEO of Ready Bathroom. The company’s first office for the Benelux countries officially opened for business in January of 2019. The exponential production growth in the last 3 years brought with it a series of new investments, such as tower cranes, a concrete batching plant and even all new cutting-edge computer software to operate the entire production plant. Altogether the investments reached 25 million pln. The company also takes a strong interest in charitable, commu-nity and social issues. It supports num-ber of charities, especially those help-ing disabled and seriously ill children.FACT BOXWith their modular bathrooms, Ready Bathroom has build a business on saving their customers time and expensesAn important manufacturer of prefabricated bathrooms for the Danish market, is opening addi-tional factories as it establishes itself in more European countries.FULL NAME: MANAGEMENT: INDUSTRY: ESTABLISHED: EMPLOYEES: TURNOVER: Ready Bathroom Sp. z o.o.Łukasz Załucki, Jan GrivalskýPrefabrication of bathrooms2015300100 mln PLNwww.readybathroom.euCo-owner - Łukasz Załucki ARTICLES | ConstructionReady BathroomCo-owner - Jan Grivalský| 26 | Manufacturing-Journal The advantages of prefabricatesPrefabricated bathrooms are the logical next step for the construction industry. It is a solution that helps to simplify the construction process and reduce ex-penses as compared with building and finishing bathrooms at the construction site. At the same time, nothing is lost in terms of comfort, quality and design. Modular bathrooms can be anything from humble and minimalist to luxuri-ous and high-standard. Ready Bath-room has vast experience in handling projects very diverse in terms of dimen-sions, shapes and any installed equip-ment, and the prefabricated bathrooms can be decorated just as attractively as any bathroom constructed using tradi-tional methods. “Prefabricated modular building is the future of construction, it’s faster, cheaper and of better quality than work done at the construction site … I think that traditional housing facilities will be gradually replaced by modules made in a factory and then delivered to the building site” - says Łukasz Załucki. The structure of a bathroom pod is ei-ther made of lightweight concrete or steel edges filled with Farmecel boards. Once the pod structure is complete, finishing work commences much like it would at a construction site, however here it is carried out on an assembly line. Every stage of the process is meticulous-ly controlled and in case of any prob-lems, a cross-checking system issues an automatic notification about the neces-sity of correcting whatever issue has been detected. The quality assessment Manufacturing-Journal | 27 |itself has been divided into two phases – partial technical acceptance (verifica-tion of the dimensions and the geome-try of the bathroom cabin, inspection of the tiling works etc.) and final technical expert opinion (verification of the water, sewage and electrical installations, in-spection of the dimensions, positioning and compliance of the sanitary fixtures, visual and aesthetic appraisal of the final product). Finished bathroom modules form a firm concrete structure resistant to deformation during transport and are shipped through an external transport company employing specialized vehi-cles. The entirety of the manufacturing process is supervised using in-house developed software, which tracks cur-rent status of every individual module through every stage of production. At its core, the quality of Ready Bathroom’s product is ensured by two essential ele-ments – the highly qualified employees and equally reliable partners. Prefabri-cation requires exceptional focus and attention to detail in order to ensure no mistake is ever multiplied during the production process. As such, the compa-ny employs only the very best people in their field, and supports educational en-deavors, taking patronage over classes instructing its future employees. As for business partners, dependable deliver-ies of production materials are the key to maintaining a smoothly operating facto-ry. For those deliveries, Ready Bathroom relies on the companies Brodrene Kier and Bims. In order to stay ahead of how various issues of pollution, depletion of natural environmental resources and related regulations impact the construc-tion process Ready Bathroom strives to employ the most environmentally-friendly production methods available. Next >