Pianoro (Bologna) – The Marchesini Group took over 100% of Schmucker, a company from Gorizia specialised in building stickpack packaging machinery for the food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic markets.
Schmucker’s success began in 1977 in a small workshop on the border between Italy and Slovenia, where the two Schmucker brothers set up a small business to design systems for the food industry. Over following years, they built single-line and multiple-line packaging machines for sticks filled with liquid, powder, granular, cream and gel products. The growing demand of multinational enterprises, alongside experiments on cutting-edge prototypes, convinced the company to diversify the reference markets, which boosted its growth impressively. Today, Schmucker employs 80 people and its turnover in 2017 was 10,5 million Euro, with a share of 80% in exports.
Marchesini’s acquisition of Schmucker came after that of Dumek, a company specialised in designing processing machines for cosmetics, of Vibrotech, working in the field of infeed and positioning systems for automated industrial processes and of SEA Vision, a leading manufacturer of inspection systems used in the pharmaceutical anti-counterfeit sector. Similar to the previous transactions, Schmucker is also a part of the Group’s strategy of strong expansion, which is also occurring on the internal lines too, with the new Beauty Division and the new rapid prototyping department, which was inaugurated on May 25 th this year.
Pietro Cassani, the CEO of the Marchesini Group, said: “Just like we did for the other acquisitions, Schmucker too will continue to be managed by its founders in order to guarantee business continuity, to safeguard the local suppliers and topass on their know-how. The single-dose stickpack market is very interesting. Over recent years, it has moved from food to pharmaceuticals, also thanks to the ease-of-use and to a size that saves 20-30% of packaging material compared with the sachets sealed on 4 sides”.
Enrico Schmucker, the CEO of Schmucker, added: “We are honoured to belong to an enterprise such as the Marchesini Group. We are convinced that we will provide an important contribution to the Group’s expansion strategies thanks to our skills and our team”.
The two companies have already started to work together. At the Achema tradeshow in Frankfurt, Schmucker exhibited a sachet line, at its booth, which has been sold to SIT in Trezzano sul Naviglio, a renowned Italian contract packer that exports most of its production.
Schmucker follows last month’s acquisition of 80% of Creinox, a company in Ariano Polesine (Rovigo) that works with stainless steel, especially to product containers and tanks for the pharmaceutical, cosmetic and food industries. The turnover in 2017 of Creinox was 1 million Euro.
