INDUSTRY 4.0., SEA VISION BECOMES A PARTNER OF THE MARCHESINI GROUP

Today, the Marchesini Group has signed a 48% acquisition of SEA Vision, a leading creator of vision and inspection systems used in Quality Control and Drug Counterfeiting. The operation, which consolidates years of fruitful business between the two companies, worth a long-term strategic agreement.

SEA Vision is an acclaimed vision system software company from the Lombardy region. This dynamic and rapidly growing group employs over a hundred people and plans to take-on even more very shortly. Its turnover last year was 32 million Euro and it expects 40% more in 2018, thanks to the fact that drug serialization is mandatory in the EU, USA and China and now also in Brazil, Russia and North Africa.

SEA Vision will remain technically and commercially independent and will still be managed by its founders - Luigi Carrioli and Michele Cei - assisted by the Sales Director Marco Baietti and the CFO Matteo Boiardi, backed in the Board of Directors by Maurizio Marchesini (President of the Marchesini Group), Pietro Cassani (CEO) and Pietro Tomasi (Sales Director).

“We have been faced with Industry 4.0 for almost 20 years, well before it became a real trend” said Pietro Cassani. “This agreement will allow us to create packaging machines that are even more unified with SEA Vision’s systems in order to guarantee customers a true 4.0 asset. The aim of this acquisition is to become the key reference on these fundamental topics for the pharmaceutical enterprises with which we work” concluded Mr. Cassani.

“I have always thought, even when I was the Chairman of the Industrialists Association of Emilia Romagna, that the best way to define industry 4.0 is ‘digitalized manufacturing’” said Maurizio Marchesini. “A seemingly simple formula, but one that offers a world of challenges and opportunities, some of which have yet to be understood and fulfilled. Our partnership with SEA Vision is another way for us to substantiate this amazing revolution”.

“I am proud to say that the Marchesini Group has realised the high technical value of our applications in the industrial field” commented Luigi Carrioli, President of SEA Vision. “We will strive to develop new technologies and products within industry 4.0”.

The CEO, Michele Cei said “I am delighted to captain SEA Vision in this strategic partnership toward new markets and increasingly complex challenges, backed by a worldwide leading partner in the field of packaging lines”.

In the meantime, at the Headquarters in Pianoro, the Marchesini Group is about to inaugurate a new factory built entirely for 3D printing, which is one of the main “declinations” of the Industry 4.0 model. The building will host all the three-dimensional printers currently used by the Group, together with new and futuristic models that will work 24 hours a day to prototype samples in very short times and to develop machine parts that up to now have been produced externally. The department will become the beating heart of 4.0 at Marchesini, making it possible to curb costs and to monitor production planning, machine wear and tear and error management. All this without even using a sheet of paper.

These actions will prompt an incredibly dynamic two-year period for the Marchesini Group. Building work will soon commence on the new Beauty Division. This business unit will support the pharmaceutical department and will be specifically manpowered so that the Group becomes a reference point for the rapidly-growing cosmetics packaging market both in Italy and abroad.

Another of the Group’s factories in Pianoro is being renovated and will shortly come back to life as a centre of “Made in Italy” excellence thanks to Rinova, a new brand that will allow the Group to consolidate its business related to “second life” machinery.

All these enterprises will boost the 2018 turnover to over 300 million Euro, also thanks to strongly growing and consolidated orders: 319 million Euro in 2017 vs 288 million Euro in 2016 (+11%), thanks to incoming orders received in particular from Europe, Russia, China and USA; not to forget the bustling national market, which is always a certainty in the expansion strategies of the Marchesini Group.