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IN the course of your life you come across
few people who will be indelibly printed on
your memory.
I don’t mean if you’re lucky enough to meet
some of your sporting or musical heroes. I
mean the man or woman in the street. You
know. The one who enters a room and there
is a presence around them.
A person that other people look up to, listen
to. Not out of fear, but out of respect.
Step forward Signor Battista Faraotti,
founder and president of Fainplast, a
plastics compound manufacturer in Ascoli
Piceno, a rather pleasant little city in Le
Marche region of Italy.
It took me – despite the language barrier
– just a few minutes to understand why
his employees put him in this bracket. He
is a self-made man. He loves, clearly, his
home city. He supports a wide range of
initiatives involving the community – and
sport features heavily in his company’s
promotional activities.
His employees are looked after. They have
modern facilities, a gym, and a flexible
approach to a working environment that
works for the company, management
and the ground-floor operatives. In other
words, he invests his time, money and effort
in the people who work for him and the
surrounding area in which they live.
I had been invited to spend three days on a
fact-finding, factory-touring visit to discover
everything about Fainplast. I saw everything
from the testing stage – and there’s a lot of
that at the site on an industrial estate on the
outskirts of the city – through to the final
production.
These compounds – a staggering 620,000
tonnes each year – are then shipped off
to customers who make everything from
electric cables, for pipes and profiles
extrusion and for shoes and medical
devices.
Fortunately everyone at the company
had gone out of their way to make this as
un-technical as possible. To put it all into
layman’s terms, if you like.
And it is a clear testament to the owner, his
shrewd management and his board that
has led to a record-breaking year for the
company founded just 18 years ago.
Since then they have become a major player
in the market, the biggest in the region
and – despite what has been a tough time
in the industry – one of the largest plastic
compound manufacturers in Italy.
In 2010 the company increased its turnover
by some 45 per cent to €71.8m – up from
€49.5m the year before. Some would argue
that a refreshing attitude to investing in
new production lines might just be the
reason for that success.
Continued on page 27
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Battista Faraotti, founder and president
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A warmwelcome awaits at the Fainplast
plant in Ascoli Piceno
Dateline
n
1993 – Fainplast founded and starts
production in Assisi
n
1996 – The company moves to a
new plant in Ascoli Piceno
n
1999 – The covered areas are doub-
led and new office premises are built
n
2001 – Production of halogen free
compounds is started
n
2004 – Medical compounds pro-
duction begins
n
2006 – Production of crosslinkable
compounds starts
A passion for plastics