We had the pleasure of meeting Martha Brambilla, who was called a year ago to lead Homag Italia, the most important subsidiary of the most important industrial group in the world of technologies for the world of wood and wood-based materials. A very interesting meeting, during which we had the opportunity to see that our friend Walter Crescenzi, Brambilla’s predecessor, was right, announcing his satisfaction in seeing his proposal to have a lady at the top accepted, with the blessing of a property that absolutely believes in gender equality, but that perhaps in certain top positions…
“What do you want me to answer you?”, Martha Brambilla replied to our first question, which could only concern the “pleasant surprise” of finding her at the helm of Homag Italia. “I have been working in this organization for twenty-three years: Walter Crescenzi hired me, who I must say has always believed in me, to the point of proposing me to the headquarters in this new role. A bold choice, not so much for my qualities, but because I am the first woman to have a role as ceo in the entire group. A gratification but undoubtedly also a great responsibility that I gladly accepted.
On the other hand, in all these years I have had the opportunity to get to know the group and the mechanisms of such an important branch as ours very well, where I arrived fresh from university, after a year of working experience in Germany while finishing my course of study.
I joined Homag Italy in 2001, almost by chance, working as a secretary in the spare parts office. Within a few years I moved on to assembly planning and then to the commercial management of spare parts: at that time there was no remote assistance and the relationship between customer and supplier necessarily passed through personal contacts that had and have an absolute value.
The fact that I know German has been of great help to me, allowing me to act as an intermediary between the needs of Italian customers and the management of relations with the parent company, an experience that on the one hand has led me to know technology quite well, while on the other hand has allowed me to fit into the fabric of Italian companies in this sector.
Little by little I learned what our machines do, what the expectations of the users are, the needs of our technicians in order to be able to respond in the best possible way to the expectations of those who buy Homag”.
We don’t want to take it from you, but it really amazes us that you have had such a past…
“What do you want me to tell you? In all these years there are many people who have been surprised to find me grappling with certain problems and certain dynamics, but it is a job that I have always liked a lot and in which I have put a lot of passion, without ever being afraid of increasingly important responsibilities and the need to be the one who has to make decisions… If I hold this role today, I think the merit goes, in addition to the trust of those who preceded me, to the fact that I have always done what I had to”.
And today? How do you find yourself in this position and, above all, what are the issues on which you will focus your attention?
“Homag Italia is a consolidated business, which expresses values and qualities recognized by all those who need technologies such as those we offer. We are present in the most important Italian groups and in many companies; A partnership that becomes more and more important, year after year, and that has prompted us to invest heavily in recent years on service, bringing in highly qualified personnel who know how to help maintain the level of performance and productivity to which our customers are accustomed.
I must say that we have a rather low staff turnover and this allows us to have employees who know our machines very well, and also what those who choose Homag want. Although the “German machine” always has a particular attraction, it is equally true that today proposing quality technologies is a pre-requisite, which must be accompanied by a series of proposals and services that determine a 360-degree relationship: I am thinking of software, the increasingly central importance of digital services, everything that falls under the definition of “servitization”. Today, proposing technologies means being even “closer” to the customer, sharing choices and problems, first of all sustainability, energy saving, how to access the advantages of the various public incentives… it is no coincidence that our slogan is “Homag your solution“.
Can we say that a lot has also changed in the proposition of new technologies?
“Absolutely. This is also why Homag can now count on about fifty employees thanks to whom we can face any complexity and give substance to what is the group’s most recent strategy, namely to be “local to local”, close to the markets with a proximity presence. A lesson whose importance we learned at the time of the pandemic, when being able to count on skills that should not come from another country or another region meant making the difference between a chat and a sale.
We turned the page and decided, in agreement with the parent company, that the time had come to be no more a go-between, but increasingly protagonists of the shares in such an important and qualifying market as the Italian one. This does not mean that for the most important plants, for the high-productivity lines that continue to be our flagship, we cannot or should not count on the most specialized technicians who come directly from the Schopfloch headquarters, but the concept of “branch” has undoubtedly changed, taking on new contours and expressing other values than in the past”.
Dr. Brambilla, let’s talk about results.
“Undoubtedly, we are in a more “reflective” phase than in the past, as for all technology manufacturers and not only for wood. 2023 was an absolutely record year for Italy, thanks to the orders we still had “in our bellies” from the post-pandemic period. 2024 ended with certainly different data and an order book that did not allow us to reach the 50 million turnover of the previous year.
Especially the first half of the year turned out to be “not very generous”, while the second half of the year saw significant orders, thanks to which we started 2025 with greater optimism than expected.
In all this, the choice of many competitors to lower prices to curb the advance of Chinese competition has weighed heavily, a phenomenon with which we must all reckon even though it is not and has never been part of our strategies to be ready to lower price lists”.
And tomorrow?
“Tomorrow, the important appointment with Ligna awaits us: in our recent “open houses” we have anticipated some very interesting news, which will be the focus of our participation in the Hannover event. As I said, we expect, both at the branch and group level, a more promising 2025 than in the recent past, and we are working to consolidate important results.
We are ready: Homag Italia is a solid company, with a great desire to grow further and to always be a point of reference for the group, because Italian customers have always been “challenging”, they push us to find truly innovative solutions that then become a common heritage of our offer at an international level.
Working for “made in Italy” is both a great responsibility and an enormous satisfaction, because in order to achieve certain results it is essential to work together, to create a truly “special” customer-supplier relationship, thanks to which we can design answers that are truly innovative, because this is and will always be a qualifying part of Homag”.
Edited by Luca Rossetti
