DELLA TOFFOLA S.p.A.

Della Toffola was established in the 1960’s, when it started making its first stainless steel vertical crushers and presses. Though the company had only just got started, its distinctive dynamism and manufacturing ability immediately gave it the impetus to compete with far larger industries operating in the wine-making sector, and it focused on finding innovative solutions.

The Group continued to grow and extended its product range to filters. The company’s quality soon became well known in the winemaking sector. The speed with which the firm was able to grasp the changes underway in such a sparklingly lively market was combined with a capacity to look to the international scene and this led to 50% of the company’s production being exported, as well as meaning that the Group owned by the brothers Vittorio, Francesco and Luciano was ready to expand its activities to the whole of the winemaking sector.

In the 1980’s, the company introduced a new line of filtering machines (vacuum filters) that marked a huge technological advance and consolidated the company's role as a world leader in this field. The 1990’s were characterized by the company's strong growth, achieved by means of mergers with other Italian companies operating in complementary fields, by the Group's diversification in new market sectors, the launching of new machines, and the opening of branches abroad. Another step that saw the company further consolidate its standing involved the acquisition of Cingano (which had been in existence ever since 1925) and Sirio Aliberti (the Italian company that takes the merit for producing the first pressure tank in 1946).

Meanwhile, the range of activities was enlarged to include the waste water treatment sector, as well as the development of systems for the foodstuffs and chemical industries. With its innovative pneumatic press, the company was again in a world of its own, thanks to its research into alternative solutions. Ever since 1996, it has been treading the path towards a global dimension, growing larger and larger, opening Della Toffola branches in France, Spain, Argentina, Chile and Australia, and thus assuring not only a commercial, but also a manufacturing presence in all the most important winemaking markets of the world.

Its latest innovation is the cross-flow filter, using ceramic membranes that guarantee a virtually unlimited working life. There have recently been further developments in the company’s BioThermo thermal vinification systems too: these systems implement a process, or rather several processes, that involve rapidly heating and cooling the crushed grapes to achieve remarkable improvements in the extraction of the grapes’ color and other noble compounds that would unavoidably be lost with conventional vinification methods, or only partially retained after lengthy processing.

The level of the company know-how and the expertise it has gained in 50 years of activity now enable Della Toffola to provide turnkey systems, competing as a leader in its sector on all the markets of Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas and Oceania, and spreading the name of Della Toffola all around the globe. The new branch - Della Toffola USA - was officially opened early in May 2009. The branch is in Windsor, in the heart of one of North America’s most prestigious wine-making regions, California.

The opening of Della Toffola USA provides further proof of the Group’s remarkable capacity for growth and this new entry joins the branches already operating.

In the last two years, two new companies have also come to join the Della Toffola Group:

AVE Technologies, a well-known company much appreciated for its systems for use in the foodstuffs sector, joined Della Toffola in January 2010, retaining its premises in Spinea in the province of Venice. The business is well known and has been operating for more than 45 years on the Italian domestic market, but far more abroad, where it has sold the majority of its products, exporting about 90% of its production to over 75 countries.  The company is active mainly in the design and manufacture of bottling and packaging machines and systems, with capacities of up to 36,000 bottles an hour. This explains why the contribution of the company's own team of technicians is so fundamental, and their projects have been adopted for numerous systems installed at prestigious industries.

In 2011, the Group was also joined by Gimar, a company with registered offices in  Occimiano in the province of Alessandria. The GIMAR brand has been known for nearly fifty years now as a leader in the design and construction of the most widely-acclaimed wine-makers and storage systems. Many of the world’s most prestigious red wines are made using patented Gimar Selector systems, bearing witness to the method’s exceptional reliability and efficacy.  Tried and tested computerized controls now bring the already excellent characteristics of the systems to even higher levels. Gimar offers patented wine-making and storage systems that have always been highly regarded by clients both in Italy and abroad, as well as by national and international research institutes.

Finally, again in 2011, Priamo Food Technologies arrived on the scene with its well-known range of machines and systems, including turnkey solutions, for processes used in the foodstuffs and beverages industries, the dairy sector, and the chemical and pharmaceutical sector.