F.i.p.i.l.l., a small Italian company specialized in the production of a complete range of pulleys, is getting ready to take advantage of the recovery by staking on an increasingly customized offer.
Forty years of work, commitment and dedication. Forty years characterized by the will of growing, designing and manufacturing components able to satisfy the requirements of the market and of customers fully. Forty years of activity celebrated as an important goal, even more significant because it has been reached in a historical time marked out by great troubles and uncertainty, as underlined by the owners of the company F.i.p.i.l.l., Luciano Cervigni and Claudio Ricci: «The goal just reached has been a source of deep pride for all of us and we have received signs of esteem and affection by many customers and suppliers».
Growth and investments
F.i.p.i.l.l. was established in1973 inJesi, then some years later it moved to San Paolo di Jesi, Ancona, Italy, and it is specialized in the production and sale of a wide range of power transmission solutions. «Our products find applications in manifold sectors and we do not rely on a predominant reference market. Pulleys are used wherever you need to transmit motion; our primary customers are anyway in the automotive, agricultural, conditioning and building industries, just to mention the main ones», specified the owners. Over the years the Marche company has perfected its offer to propose increasingly special solutions: «While in the past our standard production constituted 70-80% of our turnover, today this percentage is totally reversed. We manufacture lots of products upon customers’ designs and several prototypes. Another requisite that has become our strong point is represented by the prompt delivery, especially for non-standard materials. Our times range on average from a minimum of one day for the shipment of products in stock up to a maximum of 8/10 days for the components produced upon design». Just according to this strategy, over the last few years the investments lavished in research have been aimed at enhancing the collaborations with customers to satisfy specific requirements. «In this particular economic time, it is very difficult to make investments in innovation, even if it would be desirable for a better productivity» the managers commented, while adding: «Our product range is constantly evolving, as well as our services. We try to support customers with specialized consulting. Recently, we have also loaded a programme for the calculation of transmissions on our web site». Another important investment that the company has recently made concerns the rehabilitation of a part of the buildings to generate green energy. «We have removed dangerous materials from our factory making it safer and at the same time we have installed a photovoltaic plant that makes us almost self-sufficient concerning the electrical consumption».
International perspective
Like many companies of this field, also F.i.p.i.l.l. has been strongly affected by the economic crisis started in 2008. «After a strong instability lasted for the whole 2009-2010 biennium, during which we resorted to redundancy funds (exceptional fact for our company, considering that we had never benefitted from them), our economic and working situation has stabilized in the following years. To overcome this critical phase it was essential the collaboration with our employees, who understood the situation and supported corporate choices – explained the owners – Today we start glimpsing the first signs of recovery. Naturally, in this situation we do not absolutely perceive the support by institutions, which seem to do their best to bewilder entrepreneurial skills». For the future, Luciano Cervigni and Claudio Ricci wish that the market becomes dynamic and growing again for their company and for all small entrepreneurs. «We hope that in Italy they will implement the correct economic measures suitable for fuelling development and investments and that they will not oppress us with continuous fiscal and bureaucratic burdens. Concerning the world economy, we hope that we will go on working with all those leader Countries, like United States, Canada and Australia, and that we will provision also rising ones, making our knowledge and our technologies available».
A wide range of pulleys
Aluminium trapezoidal pulleys represent the historical production of F.i.p.i.l.l.: they have signed the company’s birth and growth. Today theMarchecompany designs and produces a series of fixed light alloy pulleys, with diameter from 40 to500 mm., and 1 to 5 races, manufactured with utmost attention to the choice of materials, machining and construction geometries, in order to fully satisfy the most various use requirements. Besides, with the same criterion it manufactures also trapezoidal step pulleys. The alloy, perfected over the years, used for this component series permits hard oxidation treatment which allows obtaining hardness between 450 and 700 Vickers. The offer by the company headquartered at San Paolo di Jesi is completed by the production of steel trapezoidal pulleys with bore for taper-lock bush; variable pulleys; aluminium flat belt pulleys with taper-lock bush; aluminium poly-v pulleys with bore for taper-lock bush; tightener slides and toothed pulleys.
