Italy: Italtom purchases ex-Ferrara Food

According to a press release dated 6 November 2018, the Italtom group, based in the Italian region of Piacenza, has once-and-for-all settled the purchase of the company previously known as Ferrara Food, which filed for bankruptcy in November 2017 with the Forli commercial court. So a new era has started, one year after the closure of the Argenta processing plant (province of Ferrara), thanks to the intervention of the two processing companies Emiliana Conserve and Steriltom. With Italtom, "the biggest private Italian tomato processing group has been launched, with an estimated production of approximately 500 000 tonnes."
 
Italtom's two General Directors, Gian Mario Bosoni (Emiliana Conserve) and Dario Squeri (Steriltom), have expressed their satisfaction, pointing out that "the new company was only announced publicly after it had been communicated to collaborators and employees. This final purchase consolidates a strategic industrial project for the group, which aims at increasing the integration of production and processing of tomatoes, both locally and at a worldwide level, in order to face up to international competition in as systematically structured a way as possible."
"We intend to continue with this approach, by reinforcing Italtom's commercial strategy with further investments to be carried out as from the 2019 season, in order to reach a production of more than 100 000 tonnes. The company processed 82 000 tonnes of tomato during the 2018 season and provided jobs for more than 100 people, both seasonal and full-time."

Bosoni and Squeri continued by pointing out that "this first season has been carried out in a context where the company has been leased, and it produced good results. We have invested several million euros in order to restart the factory and renew some of the equipment. We have achieved the objectives that we were aiming at. Among our main points of satisfaction, the biggest is the restoration of the important relationship of trust with the agricultural operators of Ferrara, and particularly with those working in the Argenta region, both with workers and with institutions. We particularly want to thank Regional Councilor for Agriculture, Simona Caselli, and the mayor of Argenta, Antonio Fiorentini, for having believed from the outset in the quality of this renewal project."
 
The administrators concluded by stating: "Beyond this purchase agreement, the group wants to pursue further objectives in terms of quality improvements for tomato products, which are increasingly linked to Italy's industrial production and the 'Made in Italy' label. A new era of trust has started between the agricultural world and processing operators, which had disappeared due to the crisis of the previous company."

Source: Ufficio Stampa Italtom