Anniversaries, the Finiper Group celebrates 50 years of innovation

Fifty years under the banner of innovation and uniqueness. This is the mood of Finiper, the hypermarket chain founded in 1974 by Marco Brunelli, one of the protagonists of large-scale distribution in Italy and one of the founders of Esselunga together with his brothers Guido and Bernardo Caprotti. Of those years, Brunelli likes to remember 'it was I who brought Nelson Rockefeller to Italy' who became the majority shareholder of the Ibec group from which 'Supermarkets Italians' was born in 1957, later to become Esselunga. A few years later, Marco Brunelli and Guido Caprotti founded the embryo of what was to become GS Supermarkets.

A few years later Brunelli opened one of Italy's first hypermarkets in 1974 in Montebello Della Battaglia, near Pavia, and in the same year established Finiper Spa, the Group's financial holding company. Only two years later the led group opened the first shopping centre in Italy in Cremona. A quantum leap for the time and inspired by models seen in the USA, France and Northern Europe because, as Marco Brunelli says, 'The best way to build the future is to invent it'.

The success of the Iper concept in a shopping centre led to the opening of centres in Magenta, Varese, Savignano sul Rubicone in Romagna. The sign also arrived in Marche and Abruzzo. Its strengths include fresh and very fresh products as well as innovation, the ability to lead the way compared to competitors by focusing on services and catering with its own pizzeria, cafeterias, ice cream parlours and restaurants, managed by a group company. In 1994, for example, the first self-service tills were installed in the historic Iper in Montebello della Battaglia. In the meantime, the group worked on the redevelopment of large industrial areas and in 1996 bought from Fintecna, the holding company of the Iri group that handles privatisation in the infrastructure sector, the Portello area in Milan where the historic Alfa Romeo factories stood. This is the start of an operation worth 120 billion lire at the time, about 60 million euro, which will lead to a paradigm break: shopping centres were hitherto built outside the perimeter of metropolises. Iper Portello was to be a city hypermarket, the centre of a major urban and commercial revitalisation project that was inaugurated in 2004.

Meanwhile, in 2002 the Group acquired the Unes market network from which 'Il Viaggiator Goloso' was born in 2015, an intuition of top manager Mario Gasbarrino who created a sign dedicated to premium products and local specialities. It is a success and further confirmation of Brunelli's ability to surpass itself every time by looking beyond. Once the Portello site was closed, it was the turn of the Arese site because in 2001 the Group purchased the 2 million square metre site where the Alfa Romeo plant in Arese stood. It was the largest operation launched by Marco Brunelli, who was 74 years old at the time. In his intentions he wanted to create a large shopping centre with an 'Iper la grande I' hypermarket. A shopping centre that would become the benchmark in the sector. The work took a good 15 years, work that Marco Brunelli followed personally. His wish is: to create a shopping centre that is not only welcoming but with lots of natural light, a space for families with a low environmental impact and with a Gold level Leed certification. The project is in the hands of archistars: Davide Padoa, ceo of Design International, in collaboration with Michele de Lucchi and Arnaldo Zappa. The code name of the project is 'Arese shopping centre' but the final name is chosen by the patron: 'Il Centro' with over 200 shops, more than 25 restaurant spaces and the Iper hypermarket. "A 700 million euro operation," as Marco Brunelli tells Il Sole-24 Ore in one of the very rare meetings he grants to journalists. Parallel to these large operations, work is being done on the customer services front. Over the years, vertical offers have been created such as, for example, IperStation (petrol stations), IperDrive (online shopping), IperBenessere (personal care), IperPiù (service area), IperSalute (telemedicine), IperMobility (car rental and then electric car recharging).

In 2018 another revolutionary idea by Marco Brunelli. To create just a few metres from Il Centro a Skidome, an indoor facility that according to the project will have three ski slopes with a difference in height of 65 metres, a length of 300 metres and a width of 60 metres. A 300 million project and one of the few in Europe that also included a restaurant, a commercial area, and a four-star hotel with a hundred rooms. The project was put on standby by Brunelli himself the following year when the hypothesis of the Sunday closure of shopping centres loomed, a threat that led to the cancellation of a large Ikea shop in the Finiper perimeter of Arese. In the meantime, in Monza, there is the construction site of 'Il Maestoso', which offers a new formula: on the ground floor an Iper and on the upper floor 'La Corte del Maestoso by Iper', a restaurant space with a pizzeria, grill, Italian and Oriental cuisine, a brewery and a wine bar. During the Covid years, the group worked on the expansion of the Fiordaliso shopping centre, in the area south of Milan, with an extension and a new food court that was created by expanding and upgrading the old restaurant area. Today, 'Iper La grande i' has 22 shops in 4 regions.