Gualini Lamiere: the defence sector provides the impetus for a surge in revenue
Diversification to produce high-tech components for armoured vehicles under multi-year contracts. On track for 20 million by 2026
by Luca Orlando
‘It all started with a question. ‘This is the part,’ they asked us, ‘can you make it?’ Although it was a decidedly high-tech component – a sheet of ballistic aluminium with high absorption capacity, not exactly the company’s core business – Miriam Gualini accepted the challenge set by the client and rose to it successfully.
“It wasn’t straightforward,” explains the entrepreneur, who heads up the Bergamo-based company Gualini Lamiere, “because it took us a year and a half to meet the specific requirements, during which time we invested in time, research and equipment. But in the end, we succeeded.”
This has been a significant achievement, not only because it has led to the completion of a critical anti-mine component, on whose quality people’s lives depend, but also because, from that moment onwards, a new line of business linked to defence opened up for the mechanical engineering SME, which was founded 70 years ago as a small workshop equipped with little more than a forge and an anvil.
That initial contract has in fact been followed by others, to manufacture critical components for land-based defence systems – multi-year orders that are driving the company’s revenue upwards, which is now on track to reach 17 million by 2026 – a rise of almost 20 points compared with the previous year, which itself saw double-digit growth.
“The idea,” explains the entrepreneur, “is to aim for a maximum of 40 per cent of our revenue coming from this sector, because we don’t want to give up our other areas of specialisation. For example, we’re growing in the field of supports for urban cable cars, a business that’s expanding rapidly worldwide. But we are also able to handle specialised projects in specific sectors, such as a large-capacity tank for processing lithium salts destined for South America – an order spanning over two years on which we are working alongside four other companies from Lombardy and for which we have taken on eight new welders.”
