The FASSI Group has today announced that the investment company ‘Investindustrial’ has signed an agreement to acquire a stake in the company.
“I am extremely proud of the business my father founded in the 1960s and the management team and employees who have contributed to its ever-growing success. We are excited about partnering with Investindustrial to support Fassi’s next phase of growth, which will leverage Investindustrial’s significant expertise and knowledge of improving companies’ operational performance and geographical presence”.
Giovanni Fassi
Click here for the Investindustrial press release
https://www.investindustrial.com/
Interview with Giovanni Fassi
THERE IS A TURNING POINT in the history of many Italian companies, one when awareness arises that in order to grow and become bigger it’s necessary to leave the comfort zone and change governance, at least a part. This is what happened to Fassi Group. The company, founded in 1965 by the Fassi family and with headquarters in Albino, in the province of Bergamo, manufactures a wide range of lifting equipment mounted on truck, among which loader cranes, skiploaders and hydraulic arm systems with hook, mainly for the forestry sector, but also for the ecological and environmental services, with particular focus on recycling, waste management and the construction industry.
The company is a leader in innovation of crane control systems and stability control technology, and it develops and produces electrically powered cranes. With a turnover of over 470 million euro in 2023, Fassi employs 1600 people worldwide with a major presence in more than 80 markets internationally and 18 production sites in Italy, France, Sweden and Malaysia.
But to grow, as the CEO Mr. Giovanni Fassi says, “at a certain point it has to be realised that the family management is not enough and therefore, to ensure business continuity, which is really important, it is good to work on governance’.
Hence the entry of new capitals and management into the Group by Investindustrial.
What is your dream?
“To grow. Therefore, I made several changes in the company, and I looked for partners with values similar to ours and with the same vision.”
How important is vision in your profession?
“It’s very important. If you want to work well and grow, you need to have a vision”.
Does it have a special meaning for you to do business in in a vocational area such as Bergamo and Lombardy?
“Doing business in Lombardy and in Bergamo surely has a special meaning, it has to do with values and with the culture of work. It is said that we are tireless workers. And actually, we are. This is true also for other parts of Italy, but here work really matters. In the 1960s, when my father Cipriano Franco Fassi, decided to start his business here, the vocation of this territory was more related to textiles than to mechanics. In those years it would have been much easier to develop a mechanic company elsewhere, for example in Emilia-Romagna, which has always been the land of motors. But doing business here was an incentive to do everything in-house”.
Have you developed skills in this way?
“ For this reason, we are even now very vertically oriented, as in those years we had to do everything in-house and, in doing so, we developed skills, ideas, productions.”
It’s a long way from your father to you, are you proud of that?
“Yes, very much. My father was born in 1930 and he had a great passion for mechanics. His father and his grandfather worked in the transport sector and owned trucks. In 1965 he started to work on crane mechanics by copying some products made in Sweden. It was natural for me in the 1990s to join the company and work alongside my father. I have never wondered if I wanted to do something else. This was right and natural. Joining the company and starting to work. Between me and my father there was 40-year difference, and I think, as for all family businesses, I was able to bring my own younger ideas, in respect of the work he had done. Then years passed and I found myself leading the group, on my turn, becoming fond of this work”.
How important is passion?
“Very much. Because it’s the key to work at our best and stay open to new challenges and better ideas”.
What kind of opportunity can an investment fund give to the company?
” We are small in the system in which we operate, therefore this is surely the key to grow. We believe that within a few years we will have a double-digit grow. I’m proud of the company founded by my father during the 1960s, of the management and of the collaborators that have contributed to its growing success. We are excited to start this journey with Investindustrial and support the next growing phase of Fassi, thanks to the significant experience and expertise of Investindustrial in increasing the operating performances and the geographical diversification of companies. Our values are completely aligned, as we have both always been committed to expand family-run industrial companies with a strong tradition and focus on sustainability. We look forward to working with the team to develop our shared projects and to forge new opportunities”.
If your opinion, is a company like yours able to attract new talents?
” I hope so and, in the area, where we are located, I must admit that there are still many people that are willing to do the jobs we look for, even workers and technicians. But a consideration is needful, as the market has been suffering and I’m afraid that in the future it will be more and more difficult to find skilled technicians, as schools are lacking. It’s an issue that the country should face.”
Fassi has a new technological hub, how important is innovation for growth?
“Innovation, safety, usability are fundamental for our work. Safety is a constant for all our products and our operations, it’s the milestone of our philosophy. Linked to safety is performance, meant as the ability to handle power. This is why we work to design innovative devices able to revolutionize the very idea of power. Another important objective is the usability of our cranes, understood as effectiveness and efficiency that become satisfaction and time saving for the end user”.