Datalogic: constant growth

Many successes and clear goals for the near future of industrial automation.

Ingener Romano Volta, Presidente e CEO Gruppo Datalogic

«Among the world leaders in automatic identification, Datalogic is now the world’s absolute “number one” leader in retail scanning, a field in which we were the first to launch scanners with imaging technology. I’m also very satisfied with our market positioning, given that we have been known for some time as the “world barcode company”».
This statement was made by ingegner Romano Volta, president and CEO of the Datalogic Group (and who founded that same 40 years ago, Ed), at the time of the concern’s usual press conference, held at the end of the year.
A standout figure in the world of automatic identification, and a farsighted entrepreneur and inventor, Volta made concrete Datalogic’s commitment and management policy, expressing great satisfaction with the benchmarks reached by a concern that, during the first nine months of 2015, registered Group net profits of 30.4 million euros, an increase of 18.5% compared to the same period in 2014. Indeed, the specialist producer of automatic data acquisition and industrial automation solutions, as well as barcodes, mobile computers, sensors, and vision and marking systems confirmed growing revenue for all major divisions. The decisive improvements reported by the Retail and R&L units in North America and Asia are especially important. Finally, the concern’s EBITDA has improved, in spite of substantial investments in R&D and in the distribution network.

Looking forward
Without forgoing its focus on specialization and technological advances that has marked his business for 40 years, Volta, goes on to explain that «our goal in 2016 is to outgrow the market, including by external channels. This is shown by our recent acquisition of 20% shares in Caen RFID Srl, a Tuscany-based company specialized in RFID technologies. This operation will enable us to create new opportunities for growth by combining Datalogic optic scanning solutions with UHF RFID ones. In such a way, we could expand our offer, launching complementary products and, at the same time, enhance our positioning on a “high innovation” and high potential market».
According to Volta, this market «will experience a decisive trend reversal in business and production policies. In fact, western concerns that have invested in Asia are now reviewing plans to reenter Europe, well aware that it’s no longer possible to count solely on low-cost labor to turn a profit. On the contrary, it will be essential for them to invest in automated systems. And in this sense, industrial automation will yield recovered profits».

Ready for the market of today and tomorrow
Datalogic is focusing on enhancing its scanner systems, gradually transforming them into “intelligent readers”. «Indeed, objects and goods in constant motion need to be accurately decoded in order to recover sensitive data. We therefore intend to not only offer instruments capable of reading barcodes, but advanced systems for transferring to users all necessary information for efficient operations management (in addition to expiry, quality indications, format…). In other words, and now more than ever, the Internet of things is substantially influencing business models, as well as transport, logistics, retail and practically every single object or physical product that might be equipped with terminals capable of conveying and receiving instructions, even remotely. We will help concerns “reinvent” themselves, in line with a new worldview that shows no signs of yielding».