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Home > Focus On
Modena, Ferrari land
Rome - (Adnkronos Multimedia) - Undoubtedly the entrepreneurial drive, the ability to attract business, specialised production, have been the ingredients determining the success of the Modenese mechanics industry, but perhaps the most important element has been another, and that is passion: a passion for engines, for sophisticated metal processing, for the construction of cars that verge on being almost works of art. Thus the industrial area for mechanics in Modena has become famous everywhere, certainly thanks to Ferrari, the most famous name in the automobile world, but also due to the ingenuity of thousands of small and medium-sized firms which have excelled in the design and production of metal products, components, industrial plant and systems.
The result, in little less than half a century, is an industrial system of outstanding competitiveness, made up of 4 thousand firms with more than 45 thousand employees, all situated in the municipality of Modena and in other centres in the province, with overall sales today exceeding 7 billion euro and an export quota of more than 3 billion euro.
There are five merchandise sectors on which the productive district has developed: metal parts and oleodynamic systems, agricultural machinery, automatic machinery, bodywork, motorcars. In the oleodynamic sector, the Modenese industries are considered as being internationally in the avant garde, occupying a very specific niche in the market, i.e. sub-systems and components destined for specific production functions, strongly combined with electronic and control applications.
With regard to agricultural machinery, in the Modena area, there is a conglomeration here of an important part of Italian national production, which in its turn is a leader in the European and international field. There are 171 firms in this area, including a large factory belonging to New Holland (part of the Fiat Group), producing tractors and self-propelling machinery, but above all accessories and work tools, both for application over very large surfaces as well as for gardening use. Products range from large rotating harrows to milling machines, from shredders to threshing machines, but also range from manual lawnmowers to hedge-cutters.
The sector for automatic machinery in its turn sees a strong specialisation in very specific sectors. This is the case for the Carpi area which constitutes one of the main national centres for the production of machinery used for wood processing; Soliera, international leader in the production of croppers for aluminium and Sassuolo and Fiorano, where the vicinity of the ceramics industry has led to the development of a thriving production of necessary machinery. There are also a number of highly specialised centres of excellence, handling machinery for glass processing, marble processing and fabric cutting. With regard to the bodywork sector, firms in the province of Modena represent the undisputed national leader, above all thanks to the presence of Orlandi, the largest Italian bodywork builders for buses.
But the sector for which the Modenese mechanics industry has become famous all over the world is surely that of sports cars. Ferrari, Maserati, De Tomaso, Bugatti are all trademarks which have shaped the history of cars in Italy, Europe and the world. This is a sector where the use of progressive materials combined with advanced technologies ensure their leading position, together with an extraordinary artisan capacity for the hand-finishing of every single part of the car, and where models of productive integration of extraordinary interest have been developed. This is the case of Ferrari, which uses automised systems for the production of certain mechanical components, but also relies on a vast range of subcontractors, all operating with production models that are uniquely artisan in nature and that have become drawn in because of their know-how - starting right from the initial phases of the process - and also actively taking part in the design of the cars themselves.
Area: Province of Modena
Specialised production: mechanics
Number of towns: 47
Surface area: 2.700 sq km
Population: 633,000 inhabitants
Number of firms: 3,924
Employees: 47,000
Overall sales: 7.2 billion euro
Export quota: 44%
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