Officine Maccaferri celebrates 130 years of 'gabions', symbol of innovation

It was 1894 when at the Casalecchio lock on the Reno river, after a devastating flood, Officine Maccaferri installed the first gabion, the symbolic product of the group, which has become, in a century and a half of history, a global leader in civil and environmental engineering. "We are celebrating 130 years since that event, although the company was founded earlier, in 1879, but that was the first installation of gabions (as many as 2,900 laid along the Rhine!) and it was a truly innovative work for the time, and a history of commitment to environmental protection and sustainable engineering started from there, which has led us to become undisputed leaders in 130 countries, with more than 20 plants on four continents and more than 3,400 employees, of which just 5% are in Italy (all white collar, ed.)," explains Lapo Vivarelli Colonna, CEO of Officine Maccaferri. A few weeks ago, the company passed under the control of Ambienta Sgr, having archived the travails of the Seci holding company's collapse (2019) and closed the arrangement with creditors last summer thanks to the relaunch set up by Carlyle Global Credit, Stellex Capital Management and Man Glg.

The party that Officine Maccaferri organised a few days ago at Villa Guastavillani, the 16th-century headquarters of the business school of the Alma Mater (in turn the oldest university in Europe) in the hills above the Two Towers, thus became an opportunity to also ideally unite age-old traditions and future innovative drive, as much in skills as in industry: "Today, stone gabions and woven steel wire represent 10% of our turnover, but geotechnics and environmental and hydraulic engineering remain the driver of our global strategies, always oriented towards minimising the total cost of ownership and the impact on the territory. And the market continues to prove us right, because if we exclude the two difficult years due to the bankruptcy of the parent company, we have always grown, breaking a new record every year since 2021. A climb that we are counting on confirming for 2024 as well,' stresses Vivarelli Colonna, who is back from a consolidated 2023 turnover close to 700 million euro, of which almost 90% realised around the world.

In its 130-year history, the Maccaferri gabion has been used in the world's most modern sustainable engineering projects: on the banks of the Bristol Channel in Wales, with one of the first applications of PVC-coated wire gabions; along the Arno River in Florence, to counter the consequences of the 1966 flood; for soil protection on the island of Santiago, Cape Verde; and, more recently, for the rehabilitation of the Novo Pinheiros, one of the most important rivers in São Paulo, Brazil; and for the construction of the Oosterweel Link, a critical work for the road system in Antwerp.

"From that double-twist mesh of gabions," concludes Sergio Iasi, President of Officine Maccaferri, "we have developed a complete and unique portfolio of solutions, with applications in various sectors such as rockfall (for rockfall) and geosynthetics (membranes for infrastructure and soil protection), among others. Gabion's 130-year history encapsulates all the elements that have made our group a world leader: the ability to generate sustainable and practical solutions, the harmonious relationship between man and the environment, and the constant drive for innovation that has turned environmental challenges into global opportunities.