Interview with Salvatore Amitrano, CEO of PASELL, a manufacturer of home appliance components - specifically washing machine counterweights - located in Avellino. The company has production facilities in three countries, employs 220 people and in 2016 had a turnover of about 25 million, which is expected to grow slightly in 2017.

Please describe the identity, history and values that underpin your company.

PASELL was founded in 1968 as an entrepreneurial initiative by my father and his three brothers to manufacture building products. In 1979 IGNIS (now WHIRLPOOL) asked us to produce counterweights for home appliances. My father rose to the challenge despite scepticism from the family, and started out on a path which 40 years and two major division processes later, has resulted in the company producing 45,000 thousand counterweights every day at our facilities in Italy, Slovakia and Turkey. Over the years we've also added two new product lines for moulding and extruding plastic and rubber to the main business of counterweights. The company has evolved along with the family, and has been instrumental in the change in our core values from Family, Responsibilities and Innovation to Innovation and Development, Social and Environmental Sustainability and Continuous Improvement of Production Factors, with particular emphasis on human resources.

What is the USP for your products/services and what are the reasons for their success?

The company’s core business is still the production of counterweights, a high tech niche market in which we currently have just two competitors (PASELL is the second largest in quantitative terms) which account for 70% of production in Europe, along with a number of local players. PASELL developed flexible technology almost instantaneously to respond to fluctuating demand: the company operates on a “just-in-time” logic but at the same time guarantees to supply customer warehouses. Our constant focus on customers and ongoing innovation in both products and service has allowed us to grow over the years and reach our current level of competitiveness.

What are your growth strategies, challenges and vision for the future?

Elite is helping us to rationalise and define a growth path, based on three fundamental horizons: penetrating further into the current market with the same product by improving the production process; working on innovation to diversify and improve the product; creating brand awareness to increase customer perception of PASELL and gradually abandoning competition based simply on price. We don’t want to be perceived just as a manufacturer of "stone”, and one way of doing this is to digitise our product: we want it to become a "talking stone" that can interact with the Internet of Things. We’re also considering M&A opportunities to become the top European counterweight manufacturer, with tools developed through our involvement with the Elite programme.

How far does the company consider innovation a strategy for growth?

Innovation is one of our corporate values and it forms the basis for our strategic operations. We have developed consolidated relationships with external partners (universities and research centres) with whom we have undertaken basic research projects into applied materials and improving performance. We have also started a process of organisational innovation and corporate governance, which thanks to the push for Elite standards is enabling us to comply with international regulations.

What does "business internationalisation" mean for you today? Exports, outsourcing, partnership, or a combination of these?

In our industry, internationalisation means building production plants near the end customer so as to minimise transport costs. PASELL decided to begin the internationalisation process in 2000-2001 - a time when it was not a necessity but a choice - when WHIRLPOOL needed a strategic supplier in Slovakia. We expanded into the UK in 2003, Russia in 2005 and Turkey in 2012. The UK experience ended when the customer's factory closed, and in Russia our joint venture with a local partner ended following a negative experience. In the current business landscape, internationalisation has become a necessity in order to compete in a reference market that is, in fact, Europe, and the early start we made has become a growth driver for us.

What are your most important markets today? And what markets are you looking at with greater interest in the medium to long term?

Our aim is to expand our business horizons beyond Europe like the world's largest market - China, a difficult market to enter but with great potential, given that customers need reliable suppliers. Lastly, PASELL is also considering completing its presence in Europe with a new plant in Poland. Growth to date has been mainly funded by corporate equity and institutional partners (like Simest in Slovakia); the idea is also to focus on non-organic growth through private equity operations (with a defined timeline) with support from partner involvement through the Elite network.

What was the most important project or time for your company and for consolidating it?

We have had three defining moments: changing production from building materials to the home appliances industry, the decision to internationalise before it became a necessity, and the entry of the second generation at the beginning of the 2000s, which drove and reorganised the company's presence abroad in terms of both organisation and control, with well-defined responsibilities for each branch.

What does it mean for you to be part of the Elite Growth project?

We are honoured to participate in this project, which has brought us into contact with many successful companies both in Italy and abroad. The project is extremely important in three respects: the coaching and training component for adjusting our structure in line with company growth, greater knowledge of capital markets, which improves our ability to communicate with institutional investors, and finally the expansion of the industrial and institutional network. As W. Disney said, "If you can dream it, you can do it." I'm convinced that through the Elite programme our ambition for growth could become a reality.