TEXtalks: Back in 1951 FERRARO was established, how was the journey to get, where FERRARO is today?
Alex Zucchi: Ferarro is quite old company in terms of establishment, over 65 years old. The team that is currently working in Ferraro company is the third generation so there is very strong team of young people that believe in the future. Despite textile is a very difficult field because competition is very though, we believe in this field that we do all the best for the future to renew the company and to keep Ferraro at the maximum level.
TEXtalks: How would you explain your vision “Tradition, Innovation, Experience, and Creativity: The winning vision”?
Alex Zucchi: Ferraro has been one of the first company in the field of developing compacting machines for knitted fabrics and based on these long term experience, Ferraro is constantly investing a lot in research and development. Ferraro will keep investing big part of its profit in R&D because we still believe in this field and I am sure we will continue to keep our company to maximum level in the worldwide market.
TEXtalks: How do you see the FERRARO changing over the last five years?
Alex Zucchi: In last five years, in our company something happen that never happened in the whole story. The change has been tremendous because of the technology, because of the new development in the features. We did not want to lose these opportunities so we invested a lot of money and we make dramatic changes in organization. In any single field, we have almost completed these strong changes and we have started now to build a new plant and a part of this plant will be fully dedicated to R&D which is very important.
TEXtalks: What does sustainability means to FERRARO?
Alex Zucchi: Ferraro, together with ACIMIT associations, has been the first, at least in Europe, to believe in sustainability, energy saving and to make our machines more green. We have to do whatever is possible in our capability to get better environment. As the future is not far as every day is our future, we are already working with a big team of engineers to study whatever is possible to provide the best machines with less pollution. In fact, we are one of the few companies that already have been certified with the green label. So just for an idea, in the last five years, the consumption of the energy in our machines dropped 40% less. This means not only a lot of saving in pollution but a lot of saving in energy also. So the customer can take benefit of these improvements.
TEXtalks: What are FERRARO main products and how important is Pakistan market for your products?
Alex Zucchi: Ferraro, in the last five year made big changes. Being a single products manufacturer was really too restrictive to us so in the last five/eight years Ferraro introduced new machines, complimentary to its main product, that is the compacting for knitted fabric. Compaction is one of the main request of all buyers as they want absolutely high quality products. So, Ferraro despite already was a leader in all these, invested once more and introduced new machines so now you can say that we have compacting machines as main products but besides we have developed all the machine for finishing of open width fabric like slitting line for the squeezing, OCS for the woven sanforizing. Additionally, since one year, we have decided to enter Pakistani market promoting also our finishing line. It means, we are giving tremendously high quality sanforizing machines. Very soon, we are going to install the first two lines in Pakistan. I am sure that after this plant will be running, the market will recognize the quality of Ferraro.
TEXtalks: As an innovative company, what are FERRARO goals in coming years?
Alex Zucchi: The latest developments in technology is pushing everybody to do something better, to do something fast, easy communication; Ferraro is also investing in this field. We had decided to start courses to improve automation in our factory. We have invested to be the first company in Italy in our field, means textile machinery manufacturing, to be certified ISO9001 and ISO14000. For the future, we have already not only planned to produce high automation in our department of manufacturing, but also to provide proper training to our operators through all the possible electronic instruments, even in manufacturing department. Soon, each assembling unit will be equipped with a terminal monitor allowing the operator to follow through constantly updated images, the whole procedure for the machines assembling and guarantee the absolute repeatability and maximum possible quality.
