Success Story Voest Alpine
Voestalpine is an Austrian-German industrial group of the most important in the world in the steel sector and in particular the processing of steel.
Voestalpine is an Austrian-German industrial group of the most important in the world in the steel sector and in particular the processing of steel.
Voestalpine has 48,500 employees and operates more than 500 companies in fifty countries spread across five continents. Despite the great efforts and the means available for research and development of innovative technologies with high added value - a vital factor in resisting the global competition.
In the years 2014 and 2015 it held more convenient, compared to the autonomous development of specific products and technologies, acquiring two Venetian companies that already had access to them: Trafilerie Spa Cittadella (In the province of Padua) and Trafilerie Industrial S.p.A. (In the province of Treviso). These companies had in fact reached, with their products, highly advanced technological levels.
The knowledge of the two Italian companies (both controlled by a family shareholding) and their shareholders as competitors or suppliers in special niche markets has certainly favored the choice of the Austrian-German group to invest in them rather than limited to the mere acquisition of their technology, but this business decision was also supported by the knowledge and the recognition that the country there were the most favorable environmental conditions to maintain and indeed develop the productive activities that the technology applied.
From the point of view of the Italian companies, the investment by Voestalpine has assured them, in a time of crisis in the sector, the financial strength to continue with the research and development necessary to enable the products which they themselves had developed, and to express their potential.
Trafilerie Spa Cittadella and Trafilerie Industrial S.p.A.: production has been doubled in less than three years and, in one, the local share ownership remained fully operational in the company while also maintaining a minority share of the capital, to the mutual satisfaction of the Italian and the Austrian-German part.