Margaritelli Ferroviaria

Eugenio Margaritelli specialises in mechanical tools for agriculture and forestry.

Fernando Margaritelli moves the company into forestry and timber processing.

Margaritelli begins producing wooden railway sleepers on an industrial scale, becoming the main supplier for Italian State Railways.

The Fontaines sawmill is set up in France, an advanced production facility for forestry management and primary timber processing.

Listone Giordano is patented, thus creating an innovative product which quickly becomes a world leader in the high quality wooden flooring market.

Listone Giordano develops its sales channels, introducing revolutionary change in terms of the distribution network in the wooden flooring market.

After acquiring Inprevib in the railways sector, Margaritelli begins producing reinforced concrete railway sleepers approved for high speed lines.

With the creation of Listone Giordano Natural Genius, parquet meets distinctive design, the first experimental project challenging architects and designers to rethink wooden flooring for contemporary living.

After inheriting the forestry business from their father Fernando, brothers Francesco, Giovanni and Giuseppe establish Margaritelli Ferroviaria, expanding the company on an industrial scale. Specialising in wooden sleepers for the railway construction industry, the company becomes one of the main suppliers for Italian State Railways just as post-war reconstruction work is getting underway.

The first large scale sawmill and the first impregnation treatment plant are set up in Ponte San Giovanni, where company headquarters are still located today.

In order to guarantee an adequate supply of raw materials for production requirements a sawmill for hardwoods is opened in France. Today this is among the most technologically advanced plants in Europe for processing hardwood timber. To optimise the logistics of bringing timber in from France an impregnation treatment works is opened in Val di Susa and an international haulage company controlled directly by Margaritelli is set up.

Works move from the Alpine valleys to the Canavese region, near Rodallo, where a creosote wood treatment plant is set up and a large scale autoclave (32 metres long with a diameter of 2.7 metres) used for the first time, with a treatment capacity of 80 cubic metres of timber per impregnation cycle.

A range of timber products for outdoor applications is developed, the most successful of these being road safety barriers.

In response to new European legislation for road safety regulations the company starts working with Professor Giavotto to develop barriers that comply with standard crash test specifications. This partnership includes the development of seven different types of wooden and steel barriers.

Company know-how in the railway construction sector evolves, moving into the field of prestressed reinforced concrete sleepers. After acquiring the railways area of Inprevib and building new plant in Rodallo di Caluso (Torino), Margaritelli becomes one of the leading Italian producers of concrete sleepers. Central to this development is the introduction of a technologically advanced production system for post-tensioning using sheathed tendons to produce sleepers and cross-pieces for railway switches.

Based on international research conducted in conjunction with university research bodies, a new innovative model of mono-block sleeper is designed using pre-stressed reinforced concrete (PRC), the first of its kind to be used in constructing high speed railway lines in Italy.

Margaritelli comes up with cutting edge technology developing an environmentally friendly impregnation treatment, which uses an eco-friendly solution as a preserving agent in combination with a paraffin based surface treatment to stop cracking and splitting. The Margaritelli group acquires Italsleepers, a Catania based company specialising in producing PRC sleepers for the railway construction industry.

After the deregulation of the railways industry Margaritelli begins expanding into foreign markets, winning a contract to supply the French SNCF with PRC sleepers to be used in upgrading the railway network crossing the Alps.  In 2009, in order to improve service levels for its French clients, Margaritelli opens a logistics platform in Ambronay, where PRC sleepers arriving by rail from Italy are reloaded in consignments for delivery to their final destinations.

Margaritelli begins supplying PRC sleepers for the high speed Tours-Bordeaux line, completed in 2015 with a total of 315,000 sleepers delivered.

The entire railways business area is brought under the control of a single company: Margaritelli Ferroviaria S.p.A.

Margaritelli Ferroviaria begins delivering PRC sleepers for another high speed rail link in France, the Nimes-Montpellier line. When completed, more than 250,000 sleepers will have been produced for this project. The same year, Margaritelli grants a user license for its patented post-tensioning technology to Rocla Ties Inc, the largest US producer of railway sleepers, for their new facility in Florida.

Consolidating its domestic market position, Margaritelli Ferroviaria takes over the prefabrication branch of Coopsette adding a new production plant to its portfolio.