Furniture components, Salice Group acquires Aitm

It all began two years ago, when the Belgian investment company Cobepa acquired a majority shareholding in Salice, a historic company in Novedrate specialising in the production of hinges and furniture accessories, founded in 1926 in Cantù by Arturo Salice and grown over time to become a 210 million euro group (in 2023), with about a thousand employees, three production sites in Italy and 12 foreign subsidiaries.

The industrial plan launched by the group's new governance proposes ambitious goals, namely to double turnover within the next five to six years, partly through organic growth and partly through acquisitions, focusing above all on product diversification and the expansion of the offer, but also on the consolidation of certain market segments already covered, explains Andrea Marcellan, CEO of the Salice group, who was called upon about a year ago to lead the transformation process.

The acquisition of Aitm is part of this growth trajectory. Aitm is a small company (approximately 7 million euros in turnover), but very solid in its sector, the production of 100% aluminium hardware solutions, an area that Salice did not cover until now. This operation will allow the group to add to its portfolio an offer of extendable tables and transformable systems, while Aitm will be able to take advantage of the holding company's international network to grow abroad.

"With our products, we mainly target customers in the 'premium' segment of the market, among which are some of the most renowned Italian furniture brands, but we are also growing in the 'value' segment,' explains Marcellan. 'We sell mainly in Europe and North America, but we are also registering significant development, especially in terms of volume, in the Asia-Pacific and Middle Eastern markets.

Functional and strategic in Salice's development path, the acquisition is part of a market context that has seen some interesting movements in the furniture components sector in recent months, with financial transactions also involving several Italian companies. "The so-called functional hardware is a little-known but extremely important sector, because it is at the basis of a highly valuable and recognisable sector, that of furniture," Marcellan observes. "Components have a low added value, compared to furniture, but a high level of criticality, because the quality of accessories, of elements such as hinges or slides, is often what makes the difference in the market positioning of furniture and furnishing solutions.