Mauro Saviola, noted entrepreneur whose accomplishments are known to us all, founder of the industry bearing his name, leader in the production of panels and semi-finished products for the wood and furniture trade, has died on Monday evening, at 19:30, in a room of the Humanitas clinic in Milan, at the age of 70, after a long illness. In many years of growing success, he has consolidated an empire in the panel business, with 1600 employees and rolling a turnover of about 800 million euros. This empire, in fact, has in recent times, attracted serious interest by overseas investors. Of course he was the first to explain to most of us how wood waste could be reutilised, recycling elements, which would otherwise end up in the dump, to produce new panels, a “recycled raw material”. We shall soon be talking about this man and his precious story more appropriately.
Allow me to share, in this xylon.it page a personal memory: the first time I met him, it was in the early nineties, after showing me the complex and fascinating process for “cleaning” the recycled wood, he took me to see his old cars. They were in the garage of a house nearby, in perfect condition. We also talked about his passion for art and the fact that he enjoyed painting. I was intrigued so Saviola showed me some of his paintings and the catalogues of his exhibitions. He was almost bashful of the notoriety that this hobby had given him and which was, in some way, closely linked to his work, his industry. It was by the waste produced in the industrial process, in fact, that his creativity was inspired.
I must admit, and I don’t say this out of flattery, that I liked them very much. We talked a while longer before he drove me back to town for “a quick bite” at a restaurant he knew and where, if I remember well, a small backroom was always kept reserved for him.
We talked about wood; mainly about passion. I told him I was building my house and that I would be getting married in the following months. Finally we said good bye with a warm handshake.
After a few weeks a truck arrived at the address where I then lived – and which I never found out how Mauro Saviola got hold of – and delivered one of his works of art. Huge, splendid. Wonderfully colourful. It was the one I most liked when he showed me his work that day.
It still hangs at the centre of the large wall in my living room.
Thank you, Mr. Mauro Saviola. May your journey be propitious…..(l.r.)
We talked about wood; mainly about passion. I told him I was building my house and that I would be getting married in the following months. Finally we said good bye with a warm handshake.
After a few weeks a truck arrived at the address where I then lived – and which I never found out how Mauro Saviola got hold of – and delivered one of his works of art. Huge, splendid. Wonderfully colourful. It was the one I most liked when he showed me his work that day.
It still hangs at the centre of the large wall in my living room.
Thank you, Mr. Mauro Saviola. May your journey be propitious…..(l.r.)
A SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Mauro Saviola becomes acquainted with wood at an early age when, as a child, he works as an apprentice in his father Alfredo’s carpentry workshop, we’re in 1949 and he is just eleven years old. “It was just after the war – we read in his biography published on the website (www.grupposaviola.com) of the famous industrial group – extreme poverty made people use their imagination to eek out a living and the Saviola’s workshop was busy making broomsticks. With the arrival of the hoover, the Saviolas resort to the wood and charcoal trade for heating.
Once again though progress went against the small company, when wood stoves were replaced by butane gas stoves to heat people’s homes and fire wood was no longer in demand. It was at this point that Saviola had an innovative idea: during a trip to Germany, he saw a machine for shaving tree branches and pressing wood chips. This will be the road to the future. He ordered one of these machines, even though its cost, 350 million, seemed an insurmountable obstacle. His brother and cousin help him out and with a small bank loan he was able to convince the Germans to give him the credit needed to start up his project. Mauro Saviola started to produce the first panels made of poplar brushwood which were an immediate success.
The only problems he found were related to the urea resins, which were supplied by Montecatini and by Sir of the Nino Rovelli industries, chemical giants who decided the market prices. After a similar experience in Austria, where the potential of this idea was acknowledged, Saviola built a factory in Viadana in 1968 to produce his own supply of resins and in 1973 he opened Sadepan Chimica, the first Italian producer of wood resins with low formaldehyde contents. The chemical sector of the Saviola industries grew rapidly in the following years to become the leading national supplier of urea and melamine resins. The most recent chemical plant was inaugurated in December 2003 in Genk, Belgium.
Meanwhile, technologies developed, research continued non stop, profits increased gradually until we reached the reality of today: an industrial system composed of 16 companies spread around Lombardy, Veneto, Tuscany and Marche, with plants also in Argentina and more than 1500 employees. Employees who are referred to as “collaborators”, because of the sincere and trustworthy relationship which, over time, has been established.
In forty years of intense activity, Mauro Saviola became a magnate of the ecological panel at the helm of an empire worth 800 million euros a year. But above all, he was an entrepreneur who pursued his wood recycling activity, involving over 2000 Communes throughout Italy and processing more than 50 thousand quintals of wood in his plants, thereby saving more than 30 million trees from being cut down. That’s something like 10 thousand trees a day. And the challenge continues” .
Mauro Saviola becomes acquainted with wood at an early age when, as a child, he works as an apprentice in his father Alfredo’s carpentry workshop, we’re in 1949 and he is just eleven years old. “It was just after the war – we read in his biography published on the website (www.grupposaviola.com) of the famous industrial group – extreme poverty made people use their imagination to eek out a living and the Saviola’s workshop was busy making broomsticks. With the arrival of the hoover, the Saviolas resort to the wood and charcoal trade for heating.
Once again though progress went against the small company, when wood stoves were replaced by butane gas stoves to heat people’s homes and fire wood was no longer in demand. It was at this point that Saviola had an innovative idea: during a trip to Germany, he saw a machine for shaving tree branches and pressing wood chips. This will be the road to the future. He ordered one of these machines, even though its cost, 350 million, seemed an insurmountable obstacle. His brother and cousin help him out and with a small bank loan he was able to convince the Germans to give him the credit needed to start up his project. Mauro Saviola started to produce the first panels made of poplar brushwood which were an immediate success.
The only problems he found were related to the urea resins, which were supplied by Montecatini and by Sir of the Nino Rovelli industries, chemical giants who decided the market prices. After a similar experience in Austria, where the potential of this idea was acknowledged, Saviola built a factory in Viadana in 1968 to produce his own supply of resins and in 1973 he opened Sadepan Chimica, the first Italian producer of wood resins with low formaldehyde contents. The chemical sector of the Saviola industries grew rapidly in the following years to become the leading national supplier of urea and melamine resins. The most recent chemical plant was inaugurated in December 2003 in Genk, Belgium.
Meanwhile, technologies developed, research continued non stop, profits increased gradually until we reached the reality of today: an industrial system composed of 16 companies spread around Lombardy, Veneto, Tuscany and Marche, with plants also in Argentina and more than 1500 employees. Employees who are referred to as “collaborators”, because of the sincere and trustworthy relationship which, over time, has been established.
In forty years of intense activity, Mauro Saviola became a magnate of the ecological panel at the helm of an empire worth 800 million euros a year. But above all, he was an entrepreneur who pursued his wood recycling activity, involving over 2000 Communes throughout Italy and processing more than 50 thousand quintals of wood in his plants, thereby saving more than 30 million trees from being cut down. That’s something like 10 thousand trees a day. And the challenge continues” .
Mauro Saviola dies
after a long illness
ultima modifica: 2009-01-14T00:00:00+00:00
da
