Boldrocchi began in 1909 focusing on industrial ventilation and thermal exchange. Over the past century it has expanded its product lines and competencies through internal development and acquisitions. It is now a leading European producer of industrial fans, heat exchangers, air pollution control equipment, and noise protection products. Boldrocchi tailors complex, integrated systems for customers in various industries like energy, oil and gas, and petrochemical. It manages projects from engineering to delivery and works closely with major companies worldwide.

1. Industry Europe 185
T
ake a look at an industrial fan from
Boldrocchi – and the chances are,
it's a lot more than just a fan. It probably
incorporates a number of components
that reflect Boldrocchi's unique and wide
range of competences. It goes without
saying that tailor-made products require a
certain level of expertise – but Boldrocchi's
strengths go much further, and its diver-
sity helps balance out the ups and downs
in different market segments, too.
"When we sell an industrial fan, espe-
cially if it is a 5 MW fan, it isn't a pure fan.
It is more like some layers of product
which are put on the fan, which make it
much more rich than the single compo-
nent," said Aeroto Division Export Sales
Manager Giovanni Barbieri. "Our ability to
incorporate different competences within
the product is very much appreciated by
the customer. This is the strongest leverage
we are experiencing, and this has espe-
cially been so in recent years."
Boldrocchi's range of activities has
g rown and developed through internal
development, strategic investments and
acquisitions over almost a century.
When the company was founded in 1909,
its first activities were industrial ventilation
and thermal exchange. These two main
MULTI-TALENTED
Whether for industrial ventilation, heat-exchange, air pollution control or industrial noise protection,
products and equipment from the Italian Boldrocchi group are tailor-made according to the specific
requirements of customers across all the main industrial sectors. Felicity Landon reports.
184 Industry Europe
LESIER ■ FOOD PRODUCTION
taking to the stove. Through a series of
humorous video clips, lefaitmainrevient.com
(in French only) demonstrates simple cooking
techniques such as how to dice an onion, to
beat an egg, tenderise a rib steak etc.”
The spectrum of packaging
Ever since Georges Lesieur created a new
market with bottled oil in 1924 the com-
pany has never ceased to lead the way in
oil packaging, from the use of more eco-
nomical and practical materials such as
PVC for bottles from 1963 and PET from
1985, to the cap with an anti-drip spout
in 1997. “Apart from how it looks, what
counts most for the consumer is the prac-
tical aspect of the packaging,” explains
Romain Nouffert. “For example, last year
we launched a new type of cap which
makes for easier opening of the bottle
and improved pouring of the oil, and
which can be produced in two colours
for aesthetic purposes.”
Bottles of seed oil are typically yellow,
but Lesieur audaciously broke out from
the crowd with the launch of Fleur de
Colza in a bright green bottle. “This allowed
us to have more eye impact on the shop
shelf, to let the consumer know immedi-
ately that something new was happening,
and to create a new market segment with
a colour code specific to Lesieur,” says
Romain Nouffert.
As an extension of their attention to pack-
aging, in collaboration with hypermarkets,
Lesieur have developed a new merchan-
dising display unit. Romain Nouffert explains
why: “With so many different types of oil and
different brand names, edible oil space in
hypermarkets had a cluttered feel about it,
the consumer was lost, and oils were in
danger of becoming a commodity product.
We decided to tidy things up by separating
the different types of oils, and highlighting
the new products and special offers so that
consumers could find their way around
more easily.” Consequently, Lesieur is
introducing a better organised and more
attractive merchandising display unit in
100 stores throughout France this year.
What’s cooking
True to its innovative drive, Lesieur is
gearing up for a major change in the
F rench edible oil market expected for
2006. “For many years an old law forbade
the use of colza oil for cooking in France;
colza was only authorised as a seasoning
oil. However, this summer the AFSSA
(French agency for food sanitory safety)
came into line with European legislation
and gave the go-ahead for the utilisation
of colza in cooking,” says Romain
Nouffert. “We believe that a lot of people
who use sunflower oil in cooking today
will turn either to colza oil or to a com-
bined oil which contains colza oil.”
With the launch of Isio 4 in Spain in
September and three new products on
the home market for the fourth quarter of
2005, Lesieur is certainly stepping up its
policy to develop more and more brand
names to bring added value to the con-
sumer as well as to increase margins and
support innovation and marketing expen-
diture. But with French buying power
dwindling, Romain Nouffert admits that
the competition is getting tough. “Our
major threat today, especially in the
French market, is the increasing trend of
consumers turning to first price products
and hard discounters.” The threat lies not
in terms of volume – Lesieur is present in
the sector through the German hard dis-
counter Lidl – but in terms of profit
margin. However, with so many quality
products, Lesieur is well equipped for the
fight. “Our riposte is through innovation
and communication to promote the
added value of our products.
Consequently we have increased our
advertising budget by 20 per cent this
year,” asserts the managing director of
Lesieur whose sales for Fleur de Colza
and Isio Protect increased by 40 per cent
during the television campaign early this
year. Success was equally impressive
during the summer advertising campaign
on Puget olive oil.
Lesieur has also afforded itself a new
slogan: Un peu de Lesieur, un peu de vous,
ça fait tout. “We hadn’t adopted a new
slogan since the 1980s; the idea then was
to bring youth and dynamism to the brand
name while linking it to the rising trend of
home cooking,” says Romain Nouffert.
“Indeed, it was through research for the
slogan with the advertising agency, that we
discovered the new trend of the fast food
generation returning to nourishing no-frills
home cooking, where oil is an ingredient
that naturally fits in so well.” ■

2. p roduct lines still represent core businesses
for Boldrocchi, while others have been built
up along the way – complementing and sup-
porting the original activities.
Boldrocchi is based in Biassono – Milan
and employs about 250 people. Today,
its range of products includes centrifugal
fans, axial fans, centrifugal blowers, heat
exchangers and air pre-heaters, air-cooled
heat exchangers and condensers, heavy-
duty silencers and enclosures, air intake
and silenced exhaust systems for gas tur-
bines, diverter dampers, air pollution con-
t rol plants, fabric filters and electrostatic
precipitators.
European leader
As a result of its development over the
years, the company is now among the
European leaders in the production of
industrial heavy-duty fans up to 7MW.
"These are very big, complex machines –
more like a plant," said Mr Barbieri." The
same thing happened in thermal exchange;
we had a big development with the nuclear
and military marine sectors – different fields
of thermal exchange.
"Today we are a leading company in
E u rope for heat exchange products and we
have gained customers all around the world."
Boldrocchi produces thermal exchange
equipment for customers such as GE,
Technip, KTI, ENI Group, ABB, Ansaldo
Energia, VA Tech, Foster Wheeler, Sirtec
Niigi, Brush. "We are now strongly present
and making different investments in these
fields for the process and energy and
petrochemical industries," said Mr Barbieri.
"We steadily moved towards very big
components, i.e., for gas turbines, and
steam turbines, to cool oils and also to
process gas. These have widespread
applications in energy oil & gas and
petrochemical.
"It is the kind of field that needs invest-
ment both on the production side and on
the engineering side because of the increase
in the dimensions of the components,
which goes step by step with the increasing
dimensions of the turbines." This is a key
factor in Boldrocchi's success – the
company uses its expertise to develop
components to support customers as
they in turn develop their new products
and equipment.
Project management
"Investment in our components is huge;
both financial and project management
a re strong concerns for us and very
important," said Mr Barbieri.
The main ancillaries around a gas turbine
a re within Boldrocchi's field of expertise,
and industrial noise protection products
a re produced within the Aeroto division of
the company, which was created through
186 Industry Europe Industry Europe 187
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3. exhaust outlets. While twenty years ago
we used to speak about temperatures as
light as 500 degrees, today, turbine man-
ufacturers are pushing as much as they
can with turbine outlet temperature in
order to have much more power. But that
has a big impact on the exhaust system
and starting with the silencer we are now
in a position to give complete exhaust and
bypass systems."
The result, then, is that Boldrocchi is
dealing with more and more complex sys-
tems – products which are more like plants
than single pieces of equipment, and very
rarely is the company dealing with just a
single component.
"We check and manage the product
starting from the engineering right
through to the delivery onsite, so the
value chain is quite wide on every
p roduct," said Mr Barbieri.
Another interconnected activity – pollu-
tion control – is covered by Boldrocchi
Ecologia, set up in 1970. This division
focuses on various kinds of pollution control
within industry, again based on working in
partnership with customers. The product
range includes back filters, precipitators,
scrubbers, coolers for gas, reactors, fans
and retro-fitting of equipment.
The main markets served by Ecologia
are the steel, metals and cement indus-
tries as well as power and incinerator
plants. "A key area is turnkey plants for
cement and steel plants" said Mr Barbieri.
"We have the technology in this field."
First orders
Boldrocchi was originally set up in Milan,
where the founder Luigi Boldrocchi took
his first orders for the supply of centrifugal
fans in 1909. A 3,000 square metre pro-
duction area was opened in 1911.
In 1914, the first plant for air pollution
control was produced; the company
offered a wide range of products, including
radial and axial fans, fire-tube boilers,
coolers, dryers, and ventilation and heat-
exchange units and plants.
During the 1920s and 1930s, the com-
pany became a regular supplier to the
main Italian industrial groups, the ministry
of defence, the naval yards and the state
railways. The first air conditioning equipment
for industrial and civil uses were developed;
important contracts were at the Scala
Theatre in Milan, the Parliament building
in Rome, and in the very first submarines.
After the Second World War, the business
was continued by Giuliano Boldrocchi,
who progressively moved away from stan-
dard equipment towards specific indus-
trial fields, including power production,
the electromechanical industry and the
major shipbuilders.
In 1970 a new factory was built and this,
with some later extensions, is Boldrocchi's
p resent site.
The factory is divided into five bays, has
a manufacturing area of over 15,000 square
metres, and is equipped with thermal,
acoustic and aeraulic test facilities. Sixty
technicians work on the four main pro-
duction lines – ventilation, heat-exchange,
air pollution control and industrial noise
p rotection. A wide range of materials is
used, including steel and copper alloys,
aluminium, titanium and plastic materials,
and more than 100 welding processes have
been qualified. Products go through inter-
mediate and final testing, witnessed by
customers or by delegated inspection
authorities.
Close integration
The Boldrocchi group comprises various
companies that can offer solutions for dif-
ferent production lines – but Mr Barbieri
points out that there is close integration
between the different parts of the group.
"We work in different fields embedded
in the group," he said. "We experience a
great deal of synergy between the different
divisions and this synergy is one of the
strong points of the company.
Despite recent difficult years for the
industry, we had a double advantage
because of our strong synergy between
the different divisions; firstly, added value
– one division can contribute to the product
of the other, and that is a winning point for
the company, and secondly, financial. For
example noise protection or treatment can
be used in conjunction with our other
p roduct expertise. There is very strong co-
operation between the diff e rent divisions."
"Our traditional market was in Italy but
in the past ten years we have been
working with more and more foreign com-
panies," said Mr Barbieri. "Turnover is
now more than 50 per cent outside Italy.
But also, our major customers in Italy sell
their products all over the world – so our
p roducts are everywhere."
Cruise ships
Boldrocchi works closely with Italian ship-
yardFincantieri both in the cruise ship
and military sectors and over the past ten
years has supplied the silencers for the
p restigious cruise ships built at the yard
for operators such as Carnival and P&O.
The company remains wholly family
owned and that, says Mr Barbieri, is a big
plus. "Mr Boldrocchi is the most active
person in the company. He is very focused
on tradition, which is a big guarantee for
the company, and on innovation as well.
"Boldrocchi continues to invest in our
people and our brand. It is all very positive."
He added: "We are in effect a manufac-
turing company with strong competencies
in the engineering and development of
p roducts. We seldom work with standard-
ised products – we work almost exclusively
on tailor-made engineering products. Our
strength is in development of the products.
We work job by job, starting from the com-
ponents right through to the big plant." ■
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188 Industry Europe Industry Europe 189
the acquisition of Aeroto, a company
active since 1952 in the field. The story of
development is similar here.
"A gas turbine needs some inlet devices
and exhaust devices, for collecting and
t reating gases," said Mr Barbieri. "These
two components have become steadily
more important over time because of the
increasing dimensions and output of the
power units. Twenty years ago we were
speaking of gas turbines having significa-
tively lower power output. Now we are
talking up to about 280 MW. Treating air
inside and gas outside has become an
important business in the process.
"Our inlet and exhaust system has its
own peculiarity. Noise treatment has
become one of the main issues. We can
implement filtration and the proper tech-
nology to treat the air.
"So we started as noise specialists and
we embedded this technology into a
wider range of products, such as inlet
systems. Because of the dimensions and
power interfaces, this required a major
investment on the engineering side.
"We can now supply a complete range
of intake systems, with soundproofing,
with our own technology. So we have
developed on the technical, production
and financial side.
Exhaust systems
"The same thing happened for the exhaust
systems. We manufacture hot silencers,
for higher than 600 degree centigrade
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