WITH 26 ACQUISITIONS SINCE 2000, MARPOSS IS THE LEADER IN MARKET INVESTMENT

"There is only one way to advance and improve competitiveness - by continual investment."

Our M&A Manager, Giuseppe Sceusi, talks about Marposs' growth and latest acquisitions in the interview for "Il Sole 24 Ore".

To know more, read the article published in the 24th January 2019 issue of Il Sole 24 Ore, the most important daily business newspaper in Italy:

    

    

“Let me think. Today, in fact, we announced another acquisition.” For Giuseppe Sceusi, taking time is natural, the list is effectively very long, starting as far back as year 2000. With 26 acquisitions made by Marposs in less than 20 years, when it comes to being the M&A “champions” among machine tool manufacturers, there really is no comparison. But even when looking at the whole Italian manufacturing scene, the multinational Group from Bologna would be ranked in first place for the number of dossiers that have come to fruition, with a strong growth strategy through external lines started long ago and confirmed year after year without break. “For us, the guiding light has always been growth,” explains the president of the Italian Operations, who is directly responsible for M&A activities, “and everything else follows on from this overall goal.”

For the group founded in Bologna in 1952, which has become a world leader in precision measurement and control systems, international expansion is now a consolidated strategy; the first foreign subsidiary (Germany) was launched in 1962, a year later it landed in the United States, and then Japan in 1970. Acquisitions do not just serve to foster foreign markets more effectively, but above all to broaden the range of supply by exploiting every possible synergy.

“Research times are long,” clarifies Sceusi, “and to accelerate growth we aim to take over companies that are already consolidated with products close to our world. We are not healers, so we look for healthy businesses, preferably market leaders. We can then make our worldwide sales and service network available to get the business off the ground.”

A strategy pursued methodically over time, which has even accelerated significantly in recent months, with four transactions since last May, the last of which was announced just a few days ago. “We always have new dossiers on the table,” adds Sceusi, “and theoretically we aim to do something each year, while consolidating and integrating the acquired companies in parallel. I would say that we may make another couple of transactions by the end of December, we'll see.” Group exports account for 94% of turnover, across a wide range of sectors: automotive, machine tools, household appliances, biomedical and consumer electronics. Distinct market sectors, which however have in common the need to measure products, components and semi-finished workpieces to a thousandth of a millimetre.

A growth through external lines, which takes time, dedicated resources and reorientation of career paths, is made possible partly by the size the group has reached; in 2018 its turnover exceeded the threshold of half a billion, more than 7% of the whole machine tools business in Italy.

“In fact, not many companies in this sector follow this path,” adds Sceusi, “but I believe that this also depends on long-term targets: expansion is not the absolute priority for everyone as it is for us. The numbers show that our sector is doing very well, as represented by the fine companies that are winning tenders all over the world. However, perhaps they could be doing more. The world is getting smaller, large groups are now everywhere. There is only one way to advance and improve competitiveness - by continual investment."