In the end, it was necessary to use the Italian factory to help the Chinese cope with orders. The story of Borgna Vetri di Cuneo is that of the return of a family at the helm of a company previously sold to a multinational. And now also the story of the return of the orders that once migrated to Turkey and Poland. Enzo Borgna is the owner of the company.
Where did the great comeback come from?
“My family sold the company to the French of Saint Gobain about thirty years ago. It seemed like a good solution that guaranteed orders and work. And so it has been for a long time. But in 2018 we saw that the French were intent on selling the factory to a Turkish company and we felt that this prospect did not guarantee employment. My family still owned the sheds and we leveraged this to buy back the factory. We weren’t very lucky: it was February 2019 ».
A month later the pandemic arrived …
“We had our hands in our hair but the situation turned out to be less disastrous than expected. Because sourcing from China from Poland and Turkey has proved difficult and European household appliance companies have begun to turn to us for glass shelves and doors. We who thought of creating niche products with high added value to stay on the market have also begun to create less sophisticated ones. In two years the turnover has risen from 10 and 30 million and the weekly work shifts have become 21. We worked without interruption seven days a week. And a Chinese company that has a factory in Slovenia also asked us to work for its products ».
In your opinion, will this return of orders last even after the end of the pandemic?
“I think it will last a long time. Because China has imposed duties on its exports having decided to favor production for the domestic market. And countries like Turkey are still not considered stable enough. Western companies now tend to look for suppliers near final assembly plants. If only Italy were able to have a cost of energy that was competitive with that of other European countries and if our logistics network were modernized, I believe that we would have good prospects in the coming years despite the increase in the prices of raw materials “.