Hats off

The world of packaging continues, happily, to provide me with some wonderful surprises.
Because, over and beyond considerations on technology and means of production, one can still continue to recount stories in which Man is the creator and not the artefact, the driver and protagonist of his own destiny.

Editorial by Stefano Lavorini

I can tell you of entrepreneurs like Paola Iannone, who dedicates her time with enthusiasm and determination to developing the converting activities of the Nuceria Group, a great pressure sensitive label producer: a woman who loves to see her dreams turned into reality.

Or Massimo Moschini, president of Laminazione Sottile Group, representative of a family that for over 90 years has been committed to converting aluminium, that bases the success of the company on innovation, quality, flexibility, but also safety, ethics and respect of the environment.

From South to North, true, concrete, tangible examples are not lacking, often concealed and little known, at times hurriedly written with the most banal of clichés.

Companies are “appreciable” if the persons that make them are likewise so: “public is private” one once said, and you can’t be thieves and saints, all the more so if one is dealing with those with responsibility, and the capacity to direct and make entrepreneurial decisions.
I bore witness to the same in a task that led me to write, along with Luciana Guidotti, the history of a company on the eve of its fiftieth anniversary: Ronchi Mario SpA.

We had already been involved in similar projects and, hence, all the more reason why we accepted with caution, almost reluctantly, the proposal to write about the recollections of a lifetime spanning several generations, in the attempt to construct a shared memory capable of standing up to the test of time.

Recounting without concealing anything from those that wish to know… We did so, only because there was not “the mildew of ideas, but the concreteness of the facts”.
This led to the creation of  "Ronchi | Hats off": this the title that we impulsively felt we should give the book, at the end of the first day spent at Gessate (MI) in order to gather the testimonies needed to draw up the work.

Aboveall because one tells of a fine story in the field of machines for filling detergency and personal hygiene products, but also for the reference to Mario Ronchi, from whom everything started off 50 years back, who “with his ever-present hat, which he would often wave to get people’s attention, spurring them to work and think harder….”.

Things from another era; albeit expressions of human sincerity, made with discretion and measure, which we found in the brothers Cesare and Gianmario Ronchi, wishing to add a touch of awareness to their approach to entrepreneurship today, without ever ceasing to think of the past, and aboveall of the future.

Which they wished to share with us - as reporters - but aboveall with those who work with Ronchi and believe in the company, the sense behind the striving and the hope of a common project.

And now, with a touch of pride, we too feel part of this history, unchangeable and unique because…”a history that has nothing old about it. It stands there immobile but lives like an age-old tree and nothing from times gone by disappears…Nothing is definitively written, because Man is an uncertain, mysterious and fleeting measure”.