Values rooted in history Cividale

VALUES ROOTED IN HISTORY

Cividale’s Group origins can be traced back to Acciaieria Fonderia Cividale S.p.A. which started its activity at the end of the 60s’ in the plant located in Cividale del Friuli, in the province of Udine, in the north eastern part of Italy, producing ingots,manganese steel casting and steel casting for general engineering application.

The expansion of the Cividale’s Group began in 1977 when the company began to develop and extend its own lines and take over other steel foundries and forges both in Italy and abroad to become a group which now employs over 1,500 workers and has a turnover of more than €360 million. In this article I aim to focus more specifically on the evolution of the Group, to find out what fuelled its growth and what has enabled it to stand the test of time. I spoke with one of its longer standing sales director, Luigi Scordamaglia and asked him to outline for me the role of the development process of the Group.

“The company’s core business today,” said Mr Scordamaglia, cover a wide range of products stretching from items weighting just a few kilograms all the way up to 80 tons castings in all range of steel grade, from low carbon up to high alloys,stainless steel, duplex and super duplex steel.

Furthermore even the served market was enlarged covering components for general engineering, ship building, valves for petrochemical- and gas- application, pumps,compressors, impellers, steam- gas- and hydro-turbines, in rough machined and finish machined conditions.

The major part of our production is adressed to foreign markets as EU countries, India, China, Russia, North America and South America .

Complete service

Supplying a specific component with custom-made finishing and any other complementary work requested with a prompt delivery time is all part of Cividale’s plants’

everyday business, along with supplying special processes such as thermal treatment, ‘revamping’ hydraulic turbines and overlay welding of special alloys. For each specific component the process will start at the drawing board and then go on to the project stage in which the most advanced software equipments (Magmasoft andProcast) are used to verify in advance the process and soundness of the casting.

“We have always invested profits back into the company,” added Mr Scordamaglia, “and for this reason have remained financially sound and can also fight off any rivals as far as quality is concerned. Our quality has been the mainstay of our success along with a continuous diversification of our products to satisfy the needs of an ever-changing global market. These factors, along with our unfailing customer service have been the basis of our long-standing success. We are a large company but provide a level of customer service more commonly found in smaller businesses as we have always believed in the personal touch and that any customer request or problem needs to be addressed at once. This is becoming rarer in large companies today.”

“The work in a foundry today,” concluded Mr. Scordamaglia, “has not changed so significantly over the past 50 years. Despite the necessary health and safety innovations and a general ‘cleaning-up’ of the environment to safeguard workers it is still a place of noise, sweat and heat and may not be everyone’s calling but if you do get hooked into this business you’re generally hooked for life and we are especially proud that our production plant with its 1500 employees is still here in the region of Friuli where we first began.” n