Datalogic is ready to go shopping immediately after the holidays and the acquisition in view is in the industrial automation sector, in the Bric area (Brazil, Russia, India and China). “We are working with some advisors, including Tamburi – says the managing director Mauro Borse – to identify the right company in the industrial automation market, the one that offers the best growth prospects, given its current fragmentation and size of six billion dollars. At first - he adds - we thought of a single, large, 100 million euro company, but now we are moving towards smaller and more targeted acquisitions and we will not make capital increases for this. Industrial automation is now worth 25% of our turnover, but we aim to double the percentage in the three-year period”.
A choice aimed at promoting growth, but also the efficiency and profitability of a company which is recovering the ground lost in 2009 and achieving excellent results. After the 2010 financial statements (392,7 million revenues, +26%, Ebitda doubled to 49,8 million) and the 2011 quarterly (105 million revenues, +17% compared to the same period of 2010, Ebitda 14 million, + 9%), now it is the new 40,7-2011 business plan that promises wonders, also thanks to the transfer of a series of activities to Vietnam, instead of those carried out in Treviso and Oregon (USA). A step, the latter, which will bring 2013 million euro of extraordinary expenses which could weigh on 11 profits. 2011 million euros a year”.
The jewel of Bologna electronics, among the world leaders in barcodes, thus chooses a targeted relocation, keeping its headquarters and current occupation in Calderara di Reno (Bologna). On the other hand, the Emilian capital is the brain and heart of the company, founded in 1972 by Romano Volta, then a brilliant young electronic engineer, university assistant and still today the main shareholder of Datalogic. “It was Professor Evangelisti – recalls Volta – who spoke about me to some packaging entrepreneurs for the quality control of their products. In short, my services became so in demand that I opened the first laboratory in the rectory of Quarto Inferiore, where I did such complex things that when I learned about barcodes and their applications they seemed very simple to me".
From that talent and those ambitions Datalogic was born, a company known all over the world and listed on the Stock Exchange in the Star segment since 2001. increase volumes if at the same time profits are not increased”. This philosophy inspires the new plan which adjusts the objectives of the previous one (2010-2012), recording +5% in 2012 revenues. Turnover in 2013 should rise to 470-480 million euros, net of any acquisitions , and Roe moving between 23% and 24%.
“The appellation of pocket multinational – says the CEO – no longer fits us. Datalogic has nothing of a paperback, all its processes are those of a normal multinational, which produces about 70 patents every year, in nine research centres, which absorb 7% of the turnover and allow about forty new products to be put on the market ”. The company has more than a thousand partners worldwide, over 360 self-shopping installations in Europe and over a thousand reading stations in more than one hundred airports. In short, from paying for products at the supermarket to delivering the suitcase, Datalogic systems find vast applications, today also in the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors thanks to sophisticated vision technologies that tell, for example, if a pill is missing in the box.
However, international competition is increasingly fierce and making profits while keeping prices down is not easy. The solution lies in the recipe “more efficient processes equal higher profits”. And efficiency finds a home in Vietnam, the cornerstone of a plan that sees the reorganization of the Datalogic Scanning and Datalogic Mobile divisions, the adoption of a single supply chain and the reduction of overheads. “Vietnam is a politically stable country, where the cost of labor is lower than in China and where we can easily find the technicians and graduates we need – explains Cuoio – we will soon go up from 150 to 500 employees, reviewing our situation Fifth of Treviso in Italy and in Oregon in the United States, where production will cease. There are no execution risks in Italy on this point, given that we have already closed an agreement with Fiom and provided for two years of layoffs. Vietnam is the right platform for Asia, while in Europe, as regards these divisions, we remain producing in Slovakia and Hungary”.
