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He doesn’t dislike sweet biscuits at breakfast, but he is really a lot fonder of savoury biscuits and crackers. Imaforni managing director Pierluigi Castello, 43, is the son of Demetrio Castello, founder, together with Ugo Bademer of the Verona-based company.
It was quite a challenge to take the lead of the family business. “Going back a little further – confesses Mr. Castello – the memory I have about the company, is about my father coming back home late from work with “black” hands. This was in the sixties, when Imaforni was limited to artisans activities.
The great leap forward took place in the eighties, when the company specialized in the design and manufacture of biscuit industrial production lines, making automated plants to meet the needs of large industrial Enterprises.
“When Barilla ordered the first important line to Imaforni for the production of crackers in 1985, I was at the university.
I choose mechanical engineering as this background could be useful for my father’s business.
I joined Imaforni precisely at the time when it was changing its identity experiencing the phase of great increases in production and, at the same time, the difficulties related to
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the introduction of our plants on markets that were historically closed to the “Made in Italy” products. It was a well-known fact that biscuits, in Europe, were born in England, and it had been thought for years that the machinery to produce them had to come from there or from German technology. We had to demonstrate to the world that we knew how to manufacture fine machinery for the production of fine biscuits”.
Pierluigi Castello entered the firm, initially leading the engineering department, and took possession of the know-how the company had acquired, by attending to the technical-commercial discussions between his father and Ugo Bademer with various world producers of biscuits.
“The turning point, the great asset that made Imaforni a leading company – reveals Castello – was understanding the need to Customize plants, meeting the many different technical requirements of the various customers. Understanding how important it was to listen: ever since we have absorbed this awareness, the firm has participated in a continuous flow of confrontations, exchanges of know-how and demanding technologicalchallenges”. In 1990, we received the order from Plasmon, which is part of the Heinz Group, and in 1992 came the first important order from the international firm Nabisco, now Kraft.
In 1985, Imaforni’s turnover was 5 million euro; today it is over 35 million euro: and Pierluigi Castello has participated, with great passion and professionalism, in the constant growth of the firm. |
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