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.
Finlogic Spa in numbers
Evaluating company’s success, the numbers 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 commercial and administrative offices in addition 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 offers 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 beginnings
Let’s get back to 1993, a very important year for Finlogic Spa, because in that year Vincenzo Battista, currently its major shareholder, began the production and marketing activities of the labels in the province of Bari through the company 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.
Milestones
Since 2003 Finlogic Spa has the renown in the market for being the major manufacturer of the labels and the distributor of the product barcodes and over the years has been able to significantly 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 company 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 distributor of brand products - SATO Italy, manufacturer of the international dimension 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 acquisitions
The first one that has made a huge impact on the company’s portfolio was acquired in 2014 Idlog Srl (51% owned), a software house specialising in systems for the printing and reading of the barcodes. The main purpose of the acquisition was to integrate and expand the offer of services in the segment of the traceability of the products. The technology 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 Lombardy with the acquisition of Fd Code Srl (51% owned) - a small system integrator that specializes in providing solutions for adhesive labels, tablet, barcode readers, ribbon and thermal printers. The 9th of June 2017 became the date of big changes for the company. Finlogic Spa put their shares on the Italian Stock Exchange, 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 (holding 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 completed in January 2018 with the purchase of Tecmark and Multitec, in July 2018 with the purchase of Irideitalia and in August 2018 with the purchase of Mobile Project. The latest strategic acquisition in December 20.2018: Smart Lab Industries 3D, a company specializing in 3D printing solutions, with which we plan to develop a synergy in the field of industry 4.0 and automatic identification.
Successful strategy
Joining the Elite project was one of those moments for the company that allowed them to pursue the way of flotation 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 attention has always been directed towards 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 requirements of the constantly changing market. Successful company needs people that know their job inside out. It’s no different in case of Finlogic Spa. The team of graphic designers of the labels keeps an eye on the quality and innovative features of the products while the production team is distributed over two plants, one in Acquaviva delle Fonti (Bari) and one at Bollate (Milan), with over 40 production lines for the labels in roll and in sheets.
Partners, suppliers and distribution
Finlogic Spa is perfectly aware that regular partners and suppliers can only improve 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 market. For the part of the terminals and readers, Finlogic Spa has a good collaboration 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 purchasing 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), Primera 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 series, all based on the Summa technology.
Outlook for the future
After the successful experience of Elite project and landing on AIM Italy, Finlogic 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 already happening. Finlogic Spa is looking forward to strong interest from abroad and for the time being the main countries of interest - when talking about the business expansion - are the neighbouring countries and those not very distant from Italy. To facilitate the whole process, the company decided to strengthen the management structure and hired an export manager to expand at the European level and an account manager, 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.
