For this Italian yacht fitter, the reward for its consistent focus on reliable quality is a client base spanning the globe. Andrew Pelis talks to Gianluca Tempesta to find out more.
The benefits of attending trade shows can rarely have been better demonstrated than in the case of one Italian yacht fitting company. The family-run business had already been producing window and door fittings for Italy’s yacht and ship builders for around a quarter of a century when it attended the prestigious Marine Equipment Show in Amsterdam in 1997.
According to Gianluca Tempesta, head of design at Allufer Tempesta, attending the show was the turning point for a business that has now managed to ride the stormy waters created by Italy’s shipping recession by diversifying into global production.
The company is located on a hilltop in the small town of Sezze, approximately 80 kilometres south of Rome and some 20 kilometres inland from the Mediterranean. It was formed back in 1972, when Tempesta’s father and uncle saw an opportunity to provide services to the then burgeoning yachting industry in southern Italy.
“At that time there were not many yacht fitting companies in Italy, especially in this area—they were more concentrated to the north around Genoa. However, they set up the business here as there were several yacht makers and ship yards in the area,” explains Tempesta. The 30-year-old joined operations after graduating in 2004 and today runs the business with his cousin Giovanni, who was previously general manager before the original founders sadly passed away.
The energy of youth has helped to take Allufer Tempesta in a new direction and today, the company designs and manufactures a wide range of portal fittings including fireproof and waterproof doors, patio glass sliding doors and portholes (out of stainless steel and aluminium) for luxury yachts and military vessels around the world.
“Year by year, there were lots of companies in the area that the business could supply and we expanded our customer base. I think that the moment things changed came back in 1997 when we went to Amsterdam,” Tempesta continues. “Our customers today come from around the world and we have built excellent relationships with the big yacht makers, including Magnum Marine in the US and Gulf Craft in the Middle East. Around 50 per cent of our work is overseas and our business stretches beyond Europe to Egypt, Australia, South Africa and even Argentina—and since 2007 we have also been working for several ship yards in the south of Turkey.”
From its 3,000 square foot base, Allufer Tempesta employs around 40 highly skilled workers in its workshop and design departments. Tempesta is quick to emphasise the importance of design to the company’s success: “We are always trying to be flexible in design and on product size; for Gulf Craft we manufacture parts for yachts ranging from 44 feet to 150 feet. We work on a flexible stock turn and aim to support all kinds of ship builders.
“We do operate some standard production on certain products which we have designed in several shapes and dimensions, but largely we make to order,” he continues. “Every day we look at how we can improve our products through customer feedback; and our IT software helps us to work closely with the customer to design the perfect product for them. From the outset we are in direct contact with the customer, linking our software to their systems.”
One of the areas that the business has recently concentrated on developing has been servicing military and authority vessels and Tempesta feels this has also helped the company to ride out the economic downturn: “We are developing a wider range of products for military yachts but have long supplied watertight doors and hatches for a local ship yard that specialised in building fast Italian police and coast guard boats. As their business grew it helped ours as well, and we are now also supplying these products in Greece and Goa in India.
“We never pushed this branch of the business in the past and it was not our core business, but today we are looking to diversify and we have been fortunate to have the opportunity,” Tempesta adds.
The need for diversification has never been greater; and given the present state of ship building around the world, only the strongest, most enterprising businesses will survive. “We are also feeling this crisis,” agrees Tempesta. “The Italian ship building sector especially has problems—there has been a huge reduction of orders which we too have felt, so it is good that we have been able to find work abroad and via the military, so that we are not in a bad situation.”
At the same time, the need to drive greater efficiency through operations is not lost on Tempesta and he cites investment in software and workers’ opinions as important parts of the continuous improvement process. IT links not only to customer systems but also helps the company to improve maintenance and installation, while employees are actively encouraged to offer thoughts on ways to further enhance production.
Tempesta has good reason to value the ideas of his workforce, for aside from using CNC lathe machines, much of the work undertaken remains manual, true to the concept of Italian craftsmanship. “It is not easy to find the right skills in Italy,” he says, “so all of our people have a long (one year) period of training before they are considered competent in the job. Some of our students graduate at technical school and then go through summer training in our workshop.”
This training and experience is vital in maintaining the high standards of Italian quality that prestigious overseas customers expect. “It is becoming more difficult day by day to manage quality; and you really have to take care of all aspects of design and production,” admits Tempesta. To this end, the company has attained ISO 9001 accreditation and the workshop layout is organised into a series of ‘islands’, with one individual responsible for assessing the quality of each product within each island.
While the cost of steel may have stabilised in recent years, the cost of labour has become a significant factor in Italy. “I think that the problem is one of labour costs and the effect of tax here in Italy,” comments Tempesta. “We pay a high level of tax here and that includes the employee—meaning that wages have to be higher in turn.”
Looking to the future, the aftermarket is becoming an increasingly important factor in Allufer Tempesta’s approach; and with approximately 60 per cent of work coming from repeat business, the need to develop solid, long-standing relationships is crucial. “Our client relationships are based on the fact that we are an Italian family-run business, which means that interaction with our customers is most important for us—we make sure that we are always available for them.
“When we started to take on increasing amounts of foreign work, we quickly realised the importance of the aftermarket. Today, we offer two-year guarantees on our products.”
With opportunity beckoning, Tempesta feels that the company is ready to capitalise on its reputation and capabilities. “I think that we have some special qualities that make our company different,” he says. “The quality of our products and design are appreciated overseas and we want to work side by side with the ship yards. They all know that they can come to us with any request, as we have the design capabilities and forty years of experience in this market.
“For the moment we are working on our stock turn and improving production processes. The next step is to develop new products, as we have seen ship yards reduce the number of suppliers they use—so we want to offer a wider range of products that deliver a wider range of services,” he concludes.
