Three generations of industrialists in the story of the entrepreneur published by Solferino. The epic of a family that is intertwined with the events of the country
The turning point in this story is a tragedy. A child who is orphaned at the age of twelve: a disease had taken his father away and, just three years later, his mother too had gone away with fatal pneumonia. It is 1894 and little Baldassare Agnelli is left alone with his older sister Mariett who suddenly finds herself catapulted into the role of second mother. No hope of carrying on the Porta Ticinese tavern, in Milan, with which the family supported themselves.
If there is a moment when all seemed lost, it is that. And instead. From there the epic that will lead Baldassare to become the progenitor of one of the most important industrial groupings in Italy: the Bergamo Aluminum Agnelli Group which today includes twelve companies, leaders in the field of aluminum from recycling to the finished product, from industrial and construction profiles to professional cookware; with ramifications in the publishing, financial and sports fields. A family story that now Paolo Agnelli – born in 1951, at the helm of the group as the third generation together with his brother Baldassare, namesake of the founder – retraces in the volume Gray gold, published by Solferino (272 pages, € 17.50), subtitle «The lords of aluminum».
Sister Mariett worries that Baldassare learns a trade and sends him to the goldsmith school. He is hired as an apprentice by a Milanese silversmith. It is 1906 and in Milan there is the Great International Exhibition that celebrates the Simplon tunnel: Baldassare grows professionally and the owners decide to invest in him, sending him to the Balkans to perfect the chiselling techniques. Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro are the stages of his journey. In Montenegro, another decisive turning point for the 24-year-old: an episode that has the flavor of a legend or a fable.
The young goldsmith is approached by an elderly man who asks him to chisel two still rough and shapeless earrings for his daughter’s wedding. Baldassare understands that that man would not have had the means to pay him but decides to do the job for him anyway, for free. The reward is to become guest of honor at the wedding party: they are Roma and at the end of the banquet they are the ones who give a gift to the Italian boy. Not imagining how important.
In fact, in the bundle they give him there is a piece of aluminum, ampoules of chemicals and a handwritten sheet with instructions. “This is our secret, but you have proved yourself worthy of receiving it”, they tell him. The secret is an unknown practice for welding aluminum, the main technique of working that metal almost unknown at the time.
“That meeting was like an illumination for him,” now writes Paolo Agnelli. «He had sensed the potential of that gray metal and now he also had the key in his hand to achieve things with it never seen before, that ability that would guarantee him a great future. Practically, he had discovered the new gold in aluminum ».
If the departure has almost mythological roots, the start of the business has the sour taste of sweat, of the choices to be made, of the unsuccessful attempts and of the successful ones. Baldassare Agnelli chooses Bergamo to set up his company in 1907. The volume traces the history of the family that is intertwined with that of Italy, but also with that of Europe and, increasingly, with the global one. And page after page, the parable of a growing country can be glimpsed from small family stories. Just as from the history of a material, aluminum, we can see that of Italian design and creativity.
In the First World War Agnelli produced tubes for the aeronautical industry. The strike season between the two wars is over. «Baldassare – says his nephew in the volume – was first of all an aluminum worker: he was not simply close to the workers, but was really with them, in the early days for a question that was not only ideal but practical. There was therefore, nor could there have been, an opposition between him and the employees ». These are the years in which the factory expands to the production of more widely consumed products, pots and kitchen items. The new generations arrive: Angelo (born in 1910, he will carry on the family business), Ernestina and Ferdinando.
Again a war, again a country that must restart and rebuild, also thanks to the versatile metal. «It was also made of aluminum by Baldassare Agnelli the famous bottle that Bartali and Coppi exchanged at the 1952 Tour de France », the industrialist proudly notes. The company passes from an artisan laboratory to a modern company. A passage also symbolically marked by the death of the progenitor in 1957, that Baldassare who became “Cavaliere”, the man who had brought aluminum to Italy from the East.
The volume recounts the years of the Italian miracle from an industrial point of view, with Angelo deciding «not to abandon aluminum in the midst of the economic boom, when many converted to steel, and indeed brought the extrusion activity within the group: it was our luck, a choice dictated by the experience accumulated in the sector and by the awareness of the properties of this extraordinary metal “. And then, again, the debate on the safety of aluminum and the passage that Agnelli defines “from the years of lead to the years of aluminum”, with its increasingly wide use, in the aeronautical field, for example, or in the common cans for food.
Agnelli is now in her third generation: the author talks about the current challenges, the one with China, above all. But also that for the environment for which aluminum, well recyclable, appears to be the ideal material. However, it is the stories of the people that color and give life to the volume. Like that of the worker Emilio Facoetti who every morning, “arriving, he woke the family with the noise of his moped at 7.30 o’clock; he had to start at 8, but he showed up early to open the gate, because he was the one who had the keys. Basically, he had become one of the family ».
Meetings with the author
«Oro grigio» by Paolo Agnelli is published by per Solferino (pp. 272, euro 17.50). Paolo Agnelli, born in 1951, from Bergamo, leads the Aluminum Agnelli Group with his brother Baldassare, with 12 leading companies: from profiles to recycling, from professional cookware to design. Over 300 employees, with a turnover exceeding 160 million. Agnelli is a founding member and president of Confimi Industria, a manufacturing organization founded in 2012. «Gray gold» will be presented in Rome on 2 December at 6 pm at Palazzo Ferrajoli: the author talks with Paolo Mieli. On 9 December at 6 pm in Bergamo 900 – Museum of Stories: here Agnelli converses with the mayor Giorgio Gori. Finally in Milan on 15 December at 5 pm at Palazzo delle Stelline: the author talks with Guido Guidesi, Lombardy regional councilor for economic development
November 26, 2021 (change November 26, 2021 | 15:43)
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