| Il Cittadino - February 14th, 2009 |
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How Sillaro found the recipe to conquer the recession Sillaro succeeds in its relaunch test: the time has come for the historical company from Lodi to confirm the turnaround in the trend with respect to its recent past, which saw it experiencing a slow but progressive downturn. At a time when Unilever is reorganising its company structure and dismissing staff, the recovery of Sillaro may be quite significant and even symbolic for its territory. In fact, Sillaro Spa was founded in 1969 by a group of young entrepreneurs from Casale, Ospedaletto and Borghetto, who decided to take advantage of the opportunity to grow together with the Lever of those years. “Every day we would see lorry loads of drums coming from Reggio Emilia, recalls Costantino Giaveri, one of the partners in Sillaro and the son of Virginio, one of the founders and the company’s historical CEO. And so we decided to produce them here: transport costs weighed heavily on such a light product – a cardboard drum, and so Lever immediately accepted our proposal”. Thus the historical Sillaro factory in Borghetto Lodigiano was established, where drums, firstly cylindrical ones and then rectangular ones, were produced until the mid 1980’s for the powder detergents of what was called LeverGibbs at the time. The growth of the company was so exponential that in 1977 a second factory was opened in Livraga, what still remains the Sillaro headquarters today, and then this led to the participation of another company from Bologna, at the beginning of the 80’s, Reno Contenitori, which produced machines for the production of drums. In what was a period of extensive expansion, during the first half of the 80’s, Sillaro employed 60 workers over two shifts with a production of over 100 thousand drums. For years drums for all the main detergents used by Italian housewives came out of the Sillaro factory, a market leader in Italy for this type of production, for the entire duration of the 1970’s and 1980’s. During the second half of the 1980’s however, the Italians’ customs began to change and Unilever decided to produce the containers for its products directly in-house. And so, to counteract the decline in the production of drums, Sillaro decided to diversify its business, introducing the production line of Kraft paper drums for industrial use and later also creating a small cardboard and print chipboard cutting centre. Sillaro currently has 17 employees, with a turnover of 2.2 million Euros, and after the guidance of the CEO Pietro Peveralli for the past few years, in 2007 it made a courageous choice, to entrust the job to a young external manager. And so the 35-year-old Gianluigi Scotti, already a collaborator of a well-known professional studio in Casale, was appointed as the chief executive officer. This choice was soon rewarded with results: as other companies within the territory are experiencing difficulties and dismissing staff or requesting redundancies, Sillaro, which resorted to layoffs in 2007, closed 2008 with a 10% increase in turnover and ambitious objectives for the future. “We are facing significant challenges, but we have a solid base, we are well-rooted within the territory and we have a good name; in 2009 we will be celebrating 40 years in business – affirms Gianluigi Scotti. We have margins of growth both in terms of production volume and turnover. It won’t be easy, but we firmly believe in what we are doing and our aim is to continue growing”. Andrea Bagatta
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