Without heSITation

The SIT group continues to grow in the flexible packaging world. Figures to hand, it is surprising how the San Marino based concern has managed to maintain the balance, year after year, between results and investments, innovation and tradition. The secret?... Energy and intelligence and the capacity to dream with ones eyes open.

Work in progress. This specific indication probably enables one to understand how and why SIT of San Marino has become one of the leading lights in the flexible food packaging print and converting sector and beyond.
A frenetic and ongoing laboriousness and not only in the symbolic sense. This I discovered on meeting its founder and president Simona Michelotti and general director Claudio Carattoni in the company’s Faetano headquarters at the foot of monte Titano. Who, while offering different insights, but with that unfailing warmth and garb of theirs, told me of the many projects they have underway.
The complete reconstruction, now almost finished, of the engraving section: a covered area of 4,500 sqm including automated storage facilities for 24,000 cylinders. A state-of-the-art engraving section, purposefully scaled to enable the prosecution of service and relations and technological development with the company’s specialised external suppliers.
And then, to still stay on the construction industry side of things, the new offices of the corporate SIT Group comprising the three production sites specialised per product/market: SIT (San Marino) and SITITALIA (Pesaro), that uses gravure technology, as well as the SAREL PLAST (Stanghella, Padua), specialised in flexographic printing.

Recurring features
I return to SIT and as ever recognize, among the many changes, the elements that basically connote this concern, proving the importance, if experienced with conviction and not for convenience’s sake, of the ethical values upon which a company has been founded, but also of the strategies and the work programs, provided these are well pondered and not improvised,.
A continuum in no way a foregone conclusion, considering the evolution starting from 1967, when Simona Michelotti along with her father Romano first set up the company Rotostampa and then went on to found SIT in 1971:
I remember her tale of the beginnings, as to how her being a woman led to her underestimation by some interlocutors and how this has even played to her advantage. And then, once the company had “grown up”, how reluctant she had been to leave her old office next to the production section, where according to her, the noise of the print machines and the smell of ethyl acetate strengthened her and gave her a boost.
Today, what remains of the past, as well as the values, is managerial expertise, passion and the quality of the human resources, because «it is the professionality and the motivation of the people who work in the company that makes the difference».
Not to mention good common sense… that induced Michelotti to fund half the investment needed for the new buildings using her own and company financial resources… to keep out of the hands of the banks.
Growing well
As stated the Group’s activity centres on gravure and flexographic printing on transparent and metalized film, paper, but also laminating with or without solvents and specific treatments for graphics and product protection.
This concern is strongly total quality oriented and acts according to GMP standards, but also with an eye to ethics, respect for human beings, the environment and for society has a whole.
Summing SIT’s value in figures: in a tricky market like that of these last few years, at the end of 2013 turnover was up 12%, reaching the level of 111 million euros, 50% made in Italy 50% abroad.
Production, over 50% made in the Italian facilities, has exceeded 450 million sqm.
An enviable performance, the result of careful planning that has enabled them to attain the objectives set in the 2012/2016 program ahead of time.
Very good, even beyond expectations, the performance of the gravure printing activities, to the point that at SITITALIA in the period 2012/2013 not one but two new print machines were installed, while in SIT work has for some time now been organized over four shifts.
Here likewise flexographic printing has shown successful growth, having increased 30%, though without new machines, thanks to the interest demonstrated by both important Italian and foreign customers.
Rather, today the objective is that of concentrating on this market segment at international level, with targeted investments already scheduled in the 2013/2018 program, aiming in particular at fostering greater efficiency and new developments as already done in the gravure print field, so as to best exploit the peculiarities of this technology (ink consumption, costs and footprint of the print systems, etc.).

Looking abroad
San Marino, Italy, Europe…SIT’s market is fundamentally continental. The service component and the printed flexible packaging supply time can be considered a limit to the process of internationalisation, but at the same time also an obstacle to entering onto the markets of their Indian and Asian competitors.
This fact though is experienced as an opportunity to be grasped:«To increase our proximity with the medium-to-large sized European companies, in 2013 we set up SIT EUROPE, based in Luxembourg, the first tile of a dedicated commercial network with MT personnel for the various countries/geographic areas» Claudio Carattoni explains with conviction.

But there is more. Today competition is done on prices, but aboveall by creating value processes. For this we have aimed at evolved supply chain processes, from the implementation of cooperative planning with our main customers and suppliers to the creation of logistics hubs, in cooperation with an important European provider, respectively in Germany and France.
Both internationalisation as well as valorizing service highlights the importance of optimising company processes and investing in manpower: in this sense the application and the respect of rules of behaviour agreed upon and shared with the workforce is fundamental».
Capacity of vision and working pragmatism enable SIT to think big and to set themselves even more ambitious objectives. Carattoni confirms:«We are investing in a project that will enable us to accompany our customers’ growth on the world markets, thanks to the competency we have built up solving their problems of packaging material procurement. It is no easy thing, but we have faith. In general - the CEO of SIT continues - I can say that I see it as positive that we can keep up with the changes affecting the world of end-users, and at times, even anticipate the same».

The future in mind
Objective of 2018: 170 million turnover, with over 550 persons.
SIT has clear ideas. It is not presumptuousness, but the awareness that it is always worth setting oneself objectives to be subjected to continuous checks and periodic revision.
In this phase, for example, the undertakings for optimising the productive capacity of the current sites – that for gravure printing are already two as by now demanded by all the customers – while the building of the new works at Gualdicciolo (RSM) has been put off to 2015.
But the qualifying aspect in which SIT continues to invest, and a lot, is still innovation, as Carattoni strives to underline:«We have an R&D section with a specialised personnel of 9 committed full time and we are evaluating the installation of pilot lines to facilitate the implementation of tests.
We are carefully monitoring the evolution of the sector: in particular everything to do with active and intelligent packaging and nanotechnologies, without neglecting the aspects involving enhancement of substrates.
We wish to be able to propose to user companies, and in particular to marketing offices, studies and research, as well as new packaging solutions.
Special projects that may not necessarily be industrialised in SIT:
An example: we have devised a lacquer that gives film a particular tactile effect, used for packaging Easter eggs».

In conclusion
There is little to be added, if not a suggestion that comes to me from the past.
In “Parallel lives”, Plutarch compares the story of Theseus, “founder of the kind and celebrated Athens” and Romulus “father of the unvanquished and glorious Rome”. It emerged, in his opinion, that the first« while he had the possibility of reigning serenely at Troezene…preferred to depart alone on his own initiative to do great things; while Romulus simply became brave through fear, citing a famous expression by Plato, that is to subtract himself from the condition of servitude and the punishment that threatened him…».

Today, a long way off in time, we no longer speak of Athens and Rome, but of companies. All the same the deep reasons that spur people to exert themselves are still the same; perhaps not so clearly identifiable, as in the myth, but intricately compenetrated by contingency and opportunity.
Indeed we are modern…yet as ever it is intelligence and force that build reality and, definitively, the personal and collective story of all.