About forty people in a factory of some six thousand square meters. The sea of Fano, in the province of Pesaro Urbino, is only a few kilometers away, but everything here speaks of mechanics, “things to do”, commitments to be honored, machines to be made more and more performing. You get a clear feeling when you enter Fimal, a company specializing in the construction of traditional machines (routers, surface planers, circular saws, thickness planers and panel saws), f
rom the simplest to the most complex, “tailor-made” much more often than you think, because even in this market segment – now – customization reigns, and especially machines that know how to solve problems. At Fimal, they realized this early, so much so that their turnover in eight years has gone from just over a million to over seven in 2021.
A story with deep roots, tracing back to the Paoloni brand that for decades has been among the beautiful names of the woodworking machinery business in Pesaro. But things change, and at a certain point, Cinzia Facchini and her sister Valentina, Stefano Morselli, engineer Sauro Rossetti, Valter Paoloni, Roberto Bernacchia and Matteo Mancini of Fonderia Fondar decided not to abandon the ship and to take charge of the history and projects of Paoloni, by creating a new company to take over the legacy. They brought some ten colleagues with them, and so Fimal was born. “It’s a long story that we carry inside – said Cinzia Facchini – but we have turned it into a totally new experience, involving many young people with a university degree or high specialization, speaking several languages, able to interact with our customers. We pride ourselves on creating a company that looks like us, that offers opportunities, that is willing to grow, like we have been doing since our birth, achieving two-digit growth: 2021 close with an excellent 35 percent increase, 2020 was a strange year, but 2019 had closed at +25 percent compared to 2018″.
“I must admit that this success is also due to the “Concept”, a really successful intuition, the meeting point – as we like to call it – between panel saws and circular saws, a machine that has allowed us to enter many markets and start a very stimulating season. Today, with our circular and horizontal panel saws, it is our “core business”, complemented by the entire production of classic machines that today more than ever are experiencing a season of rebirth: we see in the market an increasingly perceptible attraction by “basic” machines, such as the “thickness planer“, the “surface planer” and the “router”. Such trend is certainly driven by the funds offered by many governments, that have allowed even small companies to renew their fleet of machines, not to mention that even medium and large industries need these technologies for their prototyping departments and that – above all – there are many markets where these families of machines have never stopped being sold.
Much of the merit goes to our “Concept”, which has revolutionized the world of the circular saw with three fundamental requirements: first of all it is safe, because the blade runs inside the structure; it takes up little space and can therefore be placed in any facility; anyone can get the best result, because all you have to do is place the panels and start the machine to perform a perfect cut, precise and without chipping, with a single blade. Of course, this machine is “Industry 4.0 ready”, like all our machines, available in three sizes – 2,600, 3,200 and 3,800 centimeters, just like a panel saw”.
The typical “right machine”…
“Yes, it was born from our desire to change, to innovate, to go beyond but without forgetting where we come from: “Concept” has allowed us to lay our cards on the table, to give a further example of the quality we have always promoted, always using – for example – Italian and European components, not so obvious, we have always assembled Italian and European components, keeping in house all the technologies and skills to build our machines, to produce them, not only to assemble them, from carpentry to numerical control machining, processes that we obviously integrate with external suppliers, but of which we have full control. Controlling the entire process is not only an approach to obtain the best quality, but a way to be flexible, self-sufficient, masters of our know-how. I will not hide that in the future we want to expand this principle, acquiring or finding forms of participation in other companies regarding painting, special operations or for the electrical system: We had been working on it before Covid changed all the priorities; considering we have been able to increase our productivity by 40 percent with the same people, think what we could do by investing in more “substantial” solutions. We continue to invest, to enhance our production lines, to carry out other projects because this company will have to continue to exist for a long time after we are gone“.
It must not have been easy, at least in the beginning, eight years ago…
“It wasn’t, also because the competition is always fierce, but there is room for those who have something to say. Of course, it takes continuous and constant commitment to stay focused on our priorities every day, to maintain a pleasant work environment, effective and sustainable at the same time. We are a team, we have developed mechanisms that enable us to face any situation, together. This is a concept that we are “exporting” to our suppliers, whom we want to be part of, to feel part of this story; a fundamental step for those of us who work on the order and not for the warehouse, with an order book that today (November 2021, ed.) extends up to mid-2022. If we were not a family, if there were not maximum sharing, knowing everything about everyone regardless of the role of each one in the company, it would not be possible to do what we do every day; an organization created day after day, ready to adjust our aim and always set new goals”. “We have an inevitably strong bond also with the territory where we were born and where we continue to produce our machines: the Marche region has a complex history and I have suffered, personally, from always having to explain to foreigners where Fano is. Now this is no longer the case, because we are known for the beauty of this land, for our food and wine and – of course – for many excellent enterprises in many sectors, from woodworking to footwear. This is an industrious region, with a strong network of suppliers and subcontractors, painters, and turners… this has also been an important factor for our growth and success, which has allowed us to be even more flexible, able to customize our products”. In an industry that has changed radically… “… one more reason to be always reactive and snappy in the response, ready to confront with each other, to exchange ideas and visions, to change the course whenever necessary. When we were born, we decided to stop producing some types of machines that were in the Paoloni catalog, focusing on what we considered strategic, immediately setting ourselves the priority of being a serious company, able to set clear objectives and pursue them consistently”.
“Facing change in this way has rewarded us: deciding to do what we were best at has allowed us to do some things better, a value that the market soon recognized and that has also translated into a strong innovation process. We have patented a panel saw, just to give you an example, which we called “Rotomatic“, because it adopts a system with which the partially cut panel is turned so that the cut is completed on the other side, a mode that guarantees an optimal result and a saving of time. We introduced this machine as a prototype at the latest, now distant Ligna, several specimens of which are operational today. And we are working, as usual, on further developments of our technologies, because if it is true that this sector has changed, it is also true that it is imperative to respond with machines that are able to follow this change: we do not stop, because it is certainly not the ideas that we lack!”.
