Ica, ready for the world!

16/10/2015

“We have been facing the recent years with a proactive approach, both in Italy and in many international markets.We have reacted, invested, moved into the directions we considered strategic to keep growing”. It’s exciting listening to Andrea Paniccia, Ceo of Ica, leading manufacturers of paints and coatings, as he opens our meeting with a strong and determined attitude. No words about crisis: the focus is on the actions undertaken by the group based in Civitanova Marche to keep achieving positive results. Paniccia is young, he belongs to the third generation of the founders of this wonderful enterprise, with a clear vision and a “deeply-rooted” confidence in the family.

“Our priority is internationalization, where we have invested a lot”, he says. “Our key strengths are innovation skills, the quality of the products and services we offer, the values we have to convey across the border to achieve the identified target of 60 percent export share.This obviously requires direct operations in more countries.We have expanded our distribution network, deploying new training activities, strengthening our structures or creating new ones.Ica Iberia in Spain and Portugal has been complemented by Ica Deutschland and Ica China”.

A website (www.icaspa.com) upgraded a while ago fa, a new app and significant R&D investments: and in these weeks, a brand new laboratory will be inaugurated, adding to existing research units. This facility will be completely open to customers and partners, equipped with the best technology from major Italian equipment manufacturers.

“Our target is to give additional options to customers, do our best to increase their competitiveness”, Paniccia says.“Even coatings have become custom products, made to measure for each customer, for the material to be coated, for the finishing to be obtained, for the technology to be implemented, for the cycle time to be achieved”.

“We must be more and more accurate and available to customers who need to push their products to all global markets”, adds Rinaldo Guagnoni, sales manager Italy. “We need to understand trends and developments, but also the standards and regulations applied in other countries.We have specific know-how about different national standards, so each product we offer is available in hundreds of variations, according to its final destination!”.

“This is also the reason behind the creation of our Ica Academy, one of the projects we have launched recently”, Andrea Paniccia says. “As global company, we need more people in our offices abroad to serve our customers, and to deploy a big effort for training.For this purpose, we have created a real incubator, a training organization whose first initiative will be an “internationalization master”, four months of extensive training with internal and external teachers, in order to identify talents and train them for our expansion plans abroad.

And the market?

“Demand is strong, coatings are still used!China is responding well, Germany keeps growing, in Poland we are very strong:the world goes on and global consumption increases, as well as the demand for better quality.It is certainly not easy to make business in China, India or Indonesia. In these countries, we are not selling low-cost products to have wider profit margins, but we prefer to focus on quality and the capacity to provide solutions, showing − for instance − how you can achieve better quality with the same application line using better coatings.

We are facing an inevitable change, we must take into serious consideration the establishment of production units in other countries, especially in remote areas with excellent growth opportunities”.

What about wood? How does the future look like for this material in view of increasing competition from other materials?

“We have very strong competence for wood, it represents the roots of our business, it’s our world.However, this has not prevented us from taking big steps in the glass industry. We know very well that wood has more and more competitors.plastics, paper, laminates and other products we already deal with, because also these materials must be finished and coated”, Guagnoni says.“Ica has proprietary know-how for pigment production, which has enabled us to develop very accurate tintometer systems for different materials and applications.We can achieve the same results also on edges and elements made of any “plastic”.We can deliver coatings to achieve the same finishing quality on panel surfaces and edges.

Don’t forget that, for many years now, furniture is no longer limited to wood and wood-based materials, it is a combination of many materials that, in the end, must be painted in the same way.And when you talk about windows, you have to consider also aluminum and Pvc… Our experience with wood, which is definitely the most difficult material to paint, has enabled us to go further…

So, glass first of all, but then also aluminum and plastic materials”.

And now the Italian market.

“Domestic consumption in Italy is driven by exporting companies:if you don’t look beyond the borders, if you don’t work for big international groups, you run too many risks.The same applies to coatings for constructions, outdoor applications, windows, but we have not reduced our operations in Italy.we still have 42 warehouses and six branch offices, and two factories in Civitanova Marche and Romano, in the Veneto region, as well as 26 service technicians, 60 agents… we keep massive resources in the Italian market”.

by Luca Rossetti