Repositioned for growth Caffaro

REPOSITIONED FOR GROWTH

Barbara Rossi speaks to Mr Francesco Bertolini, CEO of Caffaro Industrie SpA, a producer of fine chemicals and chlorinated paraffin and a member of the Bertolini Group.

Caffaro Industrie SpA operates from the Torviscosa site, near the north eastern Italian town of Udine, which was previously home to the SNIA VISCOSA industrial district founded in the late 1930s. After having been in special administration Caffaro, as well as its sister firm Caffaro Brescia, were purchased by Caffaro Finanziaria, whose ownership is equally shared by Gruppo Bertolini and Gruppo Todisco, in 2011. The Bertolini Group, headed by Mr Bertolini, is headquartered in Bologna, employs 300 people and has a turnover of £270 million. It specialises in chemical products.

Today the company, with its 150 employees and its €50 million turnover, occupies an area of 450,000 sqm, out of the 1,205,000 sqm of the original SNIA industrial district. Part of the remaining area is occupied by the Bracco Group, with which Caffaro Industrie SpA has several projects.

The business of Caffaro Industrie SpA is organised around two areas: production of fine chemicals and chlorine derivates. In fact, over the years, production has undergone a complex evolution and the manufacturing of fine chemicals was developed in the late 1990s, alongside the already existing chlorinated paraffin work. The company also carries out work for third parties, particularly in terms of Taed (Tetraacetylethylenediamine); an activity especially developed in recent years, using Caffaro’s extensive know-how, built up over 70 years, and its existing facilities.

Work in the fine chemical line of business is subdivided into multi-plant and multipurpose plant respectively. The fine chemical area is equipped with 26 installed reactors of different materials (AISI 316L to glass lined), of a volume ranging from 2.5 to 35 m3, as well as 23 rectifying and distillation columns, more than 70 heat exchangers and special equipment devices of various types (crystallizers, solid and liquid centrifuges, thin film evaporators, etc), several storage tanks and pumps. Currently the fine chemical division manufactures ketones, esters, organic carbonates and detergency products such as Taed and other specialties.

The other 50 per cent of turnover derives from the chlorinated organic compounds division, thanks to which Caffaro Industrie SpA produces normal chlorinated, stabilised chlorinated and solfan chlorinated paraffin, as well as hydrochloric acid (of which the company is able to produce 35,000 tons annually). In this division, Caffaro is also engaged in producing specialties, particularly green plasticizers (phthalate free plasticizers) used in several markets.

The quality system of Caffaro Industrie SpA fully complies with UNI EN ISO 9001:2008 and, as the Torviscosa site holds

an AIA (Integrated Environmental Authorisation) the company offers maximum compliance with all environmental requirements set out by the European Union. Caffaro has also joined the Responsible Care Program and is a member of both Federchimica and AssindUd (the industrial association of Udine). The Bertolini Group is involved in the Federchimica board, of which its CEO, Mr Bertolini, is a member.

Environmentally friendly chlorine soda

The Bertolini group is also involved in another project being developed at the former SNIA VISCOSA Torviscosa site. In fact, the group, through Caffaro Finanziaria (which is jointly owned by the Todisco group) is part of a joint venture with the Bracco group and Friulia - the public financial body of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, in which Udine is located - to develop a new public-private company, Halo Industry, which will become operational at the end of 2015. Thanks to a new environmentally friendly plant, Halo Industry will produce chlorine soda. €40 million had been invested in this project, in which Caffaro Finanziaria participates with a share of 55 per cent, Friulia with 30 per cent and Bracco with 15 per cent.

Mr Bertolini tells Industry Europe, “The fine chemical sector is developing continuously. Our products are used for detergents, cosmetics, pharmaceutical, lubricant, coating and herbicidal applications. They are mainly for export to Europe, China, India and North America. Chloroparaffins on the other hand are sold 50 per cent in Italy and 50 per cent in Europe, with most derivates mainly being placed on the Italian market. Geographically, our focus market for fine chemicals is North America (both US and Canada). We are planning to increase our market share there, thanks to our own fine chemicals production. Obviously as soon as our chlorine soda project becomes operational, this division will also grow rapidly, therefore I would say that our future growth will be pulled by both of these business areas. We are now investing a lot in both of our divisions, while in the past, before our acquisition, Caffaro did not benefit from as much investment due to a difficult economic situation and then to the fact that it was in special administration. We have an internal R & D department, staffed with 15 people, which benefits from the enormous know-how developed by SNIA over the years. With the current facilities and staff we have the potential of reaching a turnover of €100 million, which we aim to achieve by 2015. We will grow thanks to an expansion of our volumes, rather than through acquisitions.”

“Many of our suppliers, who are leading European companies, are also our clients, as we carry out contract manufacturing for them. We have been working with them for a long time. In fact all our manufacturing agreements are with companies which were already our suppliers.” n

Global Strategy is an international management consultancy and corporate finance company. It helps entrepreneurs, managers and financial investors with development, strategic planning, internationalisation, and financial and industrial crisis resolution processes; as well as with extraordinary operation and M&A planning and implementation.

In its capacity as industrial and financial adviser Global Strategy helped Gruppo Bertolini/Todisco with the purchasing of Caffaro Industrie, which was in extraordinary administration, the reorganisation and development strategy of the Torvisca chemical plant and the structuring/procurement of the financial resources for the implementation of new production investments.

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