BINASCO, Milan (Italy) – Double milestone this year for the Cimbali Group which celebrates both its 110th birthday and the 10th anniversary of MUMAC – its company museum – the largest permanent exhibition devoted to the history, world and culture of professional espresso machines.
The company, founded in 1912, has grown consistently over the last 110 years, becoming the multinational that it is today: one of the world’s leading manufacturers of professional espresso machines.
As early as the late 1940s, the Cimbali Group’s structured export business enabled it to take espresso coffee all over the world and discover other markets, other cultures and other ways of drinking and understanding coffee.
Cimbali Group’s anniversary
The company has adopted an effective and high-performance organisational structure: 4 plants in northern Italy and 1 in the USA, 2 sales offices in Italy and 11 offices abroad, and a distribution network in over 100 countries.
An authentic Italian business which has expanded over the years, exporting its knowhow and its entrepreneurial expertise based on an unwavering commitment to product and service innovation and to environmental and social sustainability.
“We have acquired a vast amount of experience in the sector over our long history and this has been crucial in helping us to remain open-minded and develop our ability to anticipate the future. However, it is only by innovating that we have managed to bring our projects to life and grow on the market”, comments Maurizio Cimbali, Chairman of the company and grandson of the founder. “Today, innovation must go hand-in-hand with 360° sustainability and the Cimbali Group will continue to invest in this area”.
From the origins to the present day: over a century of enterprise
It all started in 1912, when Giuseppe Cimbali opened a small copper workshop in Via Caminadella, in the centre of Milan. In 1930 the business expanded its vision for the first time with the acquisition of a company specialising in the manufacture of espresso machines and the consequent creation of Ditta Giuseppe Cimbali.
Over the next twenty years the first and second generation of the Cimbali family worked non-stop to produce coffee machines that immediately stood out for their innovation and design. In 1950 Cimbali presented the “Gioiello” in a jewellery box at the Fiera Campionaria of Milan.
1984 saw the company reins handed over entirely to the third generation, also marking a cultural change in the management philosophy: the involvement of an external management team of proven ability and experience which, with its strategic company decisions constantly overseen by the family, was able to ensure the development of the company at a time of strong growth, accelerating its processes.
The acquisitions
Over the following decades the Group therefore continued to grow also thanks to acquisitions. In 1995 the Group acquired Faema, its main competitor at the time. 2005 saw the formation of the holding company and, at the same time, the acquisition of Casadio, historic Bolognese company specialising in grinder-dosers.
In 2017 there was another important acquisition in Slayer, a Seattle-based American company that makes espresso machines dedicated to speciality coffees, high-quality single-origins from plantations all over the world.
In 2019 the Group acquired Keber, which has a production plant in Dolo, in the province of Venice. Keber has been on the coffee market for 30 years, designing and manufacturing grinders for leading Italian and international coffee brands.
The present but above all the future: innovation and sustainability
Together with internationalisation and sustainability, innovation has always been one of the cornerstones of the Cimbali Group philosophy. Every day over 60 professionals in the R&D department work to design and develop high-performance machines. All activities are conducted in-house, as reflected by the 66 patents currently held by the company, 19 of which filed in the last three years.
One important figure is worth underlining: forecast investments in product development in 2023 will equate to over 5% of revenues.
The Cimbali Group has worked on several cutting-edge sustainable technologies, also presented during the Host 2021 trade fair, which improve machine performance while limiting their environmental impact and enhancing the skills of professionals.
Naso Elettronico (electronic nose), winner of the 2021 Smau Innovation Award, a piece of software that is able to identify blends using an Artificial Intelligence algorithm; touchless interaction with Cup4you – Evo, the application which, thanks to a Wi-Fi connection, offers new forms of interaction with fully automatic machines; Art.IN.Coffee.
Sustainability
Sustainability is the common thread that connects all of the activities of the Cimbali Group, from products to services, innovation to technology. We have outlined our serious commitment to the themes of the UN 2030 Agenda, pledging to take concrete and measurable actions in relation to four specific Sustainable Development Goals: planet, people, product, partnerships.
In practice, for the Cimbali Group this means: people, i.e. workplace safety, social projects and promoting culture with the involvement of local communities; products, i.e. sustainable packaging, energy savings and life cycle assessment; partnerships and planet, involving projects to raise awareness on global environmental issues, processes for sites and plants and finally – of course – the sustainability of the coffee supply chain.
In particular, our photovoltaic system will be subject of major investments, €600,000 in 2023, with the aim of trebling our installed capacity in order to meet around 50% of our energy needs.
In July this year we published our first sustainability report, with the aim of obtaining the first results in 2023. The Cimbali Group plays a frontline role in this area, from worker health to its commitment to reducing waste, from the use of recyclable materials to the application of cutting-edge green technologies, and through to its constant collaboration with other organisations in order to meet common goals.
