ALL-ROUND QUALITY
DEVELOPMENT Just as in the past, the core business of IRO (Industrie Riunite Odolesi) SpA is still the production of reinforcing bars, but for some years now the company has started diversifying its activity, manufacturing niche products and billets. Barbara Rossi interviews Mr Carlo Leali, the company’s vice-president.
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RO SpA has a 60-year history, having been established in Odolo (Brescia) in 1951, as a rolling mill for the production of reinforcing bars. The company further developed its activity over the years, with the installation in the 1960’s - of the first electric furnace for scrap melting and the introduction of one of the first continuous casting lines for billet manufacturing, followed in the 1970’s by the installation of a new rolling mill and a new continuous casting machine, always with the aim of
increasing production and improving product quality. In the 1990’s there was another quality leap, thanks to the inclusion of the Tempcore system, for product welding and ductility, into the manufacturing process; and to gaining the UNI EN ISO 9001 certification, in addition to which today the company has also achieved the UNI EN ISO 14001 environmental benchmark. Two years ago IRO, which currently has 215 employees and an annual turnover of about €200 million, made investments
totalling €12 million for the construction of a new continuous casting line, which has allowed it to widen the dimensional range of the billets that it manufactures, which can now reach maximum square section dimensions of 180x180mm. Moreover, thanks to this line, the company can manufacture quality steels, a sector which the company is trying to expand, to counterbalance the dip in demand for reinforcing bars, due to the crisis affecting the construction sector in Europe.
