The All.Co Group, a new extrusion line in Pisa, looks to the future and promotes innovation

All.Co Group is a new extrusion line in Pisa, with great attention to the technological level and eco-sustainability of production chains, human resources and corporate social responsibility.

A&L had the opportunity to engage with Milva and Alessia Vecoli, who now lead the All.Co Group. During the discussion, they highlighted their focus on sustainability, emphasising that the group prioritises eco-sustainability by using recycled materials for over half of its extrusion production.

The All.Co Group is currently one of the most important players in the aluminium extrusion sector in Italy and Europe. Created by the brilliant intuition of Luigi Vecoli, a great personality of the Italian aluminium world who passed away in December 2022, the Group has grown continuously. It all began in the early 1960s with the Vecoli Luigi family business in the trade and distribution of aluminium profile systems in the Tuscany area, a choice based on the growth potential of aluminium not only in construction but in many other fields.

The founder was able to see the right thing at the right time and was far-sighted in foreseeing the growth potential of the then nascent ‘Siste-ma’, the name which became the symbol of the set of profiles to make a series of aluminium extruded window and door frames. He created Anodal Sas then Anodica Versilia for the surface treatments of semi-finished light alloy products, and developed the distribution of extrusions to the Sardinian market as well. Hence the great step forward of founding All.Co, the first factory for the production of aluminium extrusions in Tuscany in 1973, in Ospedaletto near Pisa, starting with an extrusion press integrated with a remelting foundry, Fondall.

This was the beginning of continuous growth, with extrusion plants in Padua and Pontedera, the latter autonomous from the Group since 2021, with distribution centres in Italy and abroad. All this in the clear entrepreneurial vision of Luigi Vecoli, who was used to looking bravely always ahead, to facing all challenges with enthusiasm, always ready to start again with new ideas on aluminium, because, as he used to say, it is a perfect metal, light, beautiful, resistant to stress and corrosion, workable, and finally eternal, since it can be recycled infinitely. We met Milva and Alessia Vecoli, today president and managing director of All.Co. respectively, at the headquarters in Ospedaletto, together with the closest collaborators in charge of the company, and it was an opportunity to take stock of the situation to date, after the passing away of the founder, and of All.Co.’s prospects.

All.Co: This is the first time since our father left us last December that we are talking about the performance of our Group and we can say with satisfaction that we are honouring his commitment of so many years in all that he had created from nothing. Today we are steering the company with good results, in line with his ideas and his basic principle, to always look ahead with investments in machinery and technology, and above all to focus on human capital.

Today All.Co is an authoritative and recognised player in the international aluminium extrusion industry, with four active plants in Pisa, Pietrasanta, Padua and Oristano. We have completely redefined, rationalised and integrated our production cycles; we operate with two large-capacity melting furnaces, five extrusion presses, and two coating lines, one of which specialises in sublimation treatments. The direct employees are 400, the warehouses and distribution centres in Italy and abroad number about fifteen. The Research and Development Centre, the heart of the company and the protagonist of innovation in our companies, works to constantly improve the products in the catalogue and to study increasingly high-performance solutions in all areas of aluminium use.

A&L: From your privileged observatory as a leading manufacturer, how do you see the extrusion production segment today?

All.Co: Let us start by saying that the extrusion industry has changed profoundly in recent years, both locally and globally. There is no permanent advantage deriving from our position, but a continuous comparison of performance levels, quality, reliability and product variety, creating synergies with users on one hand and supply chain partners on the other. Even companies like ours with a history and long experience behind them must always be alert and prepared to defend the margins of competitive advantage they have gained. Inevitably this also means looking towards other sectors in which aluminium extrusions are used, from mechanics to transportation of every kind, design, furniture, solar energy, and so on.

A&L: Expanding the applications of extrusions implies more stringent or different delivery and quality requirements than for standard products. I am referring, for example, to extrusions for structural applications or large formats. Is this a stimulus for the development of new products and new technological solutions?

All.Co: This broadening of the types of use has long pushed us in the direction of working with increasingly perfected alloys from a metallurgical and technological standpoint in order to be more suitable for extrusion and to enable the production of profiles, even of large dimensions and complex designs, stronger and tougher, more aesthetically attractive and with better machinability.

For instance, we have defined and selected a whole series of alloys which, starting from the standard chemical compositions of international regulations, are perfectly balanced in the content of the main alloying elements such as magnesium and silicon for alloys 6000 or minor elements according to what the different types of end use require.

Looking at the building products sector from which we started fifty years ago, and which still represents a central and significant segment for our production mix, we develop high-performance systems for the production of the main types of windows and doors and architectural constructions in aluminium extrusions; without going into too many details, we propose window and door systems with all kinds of solutions. Our commitment in the area of customised profiles in a wide range of dimensions and metallurgical and technological characteristics for applications, including structural ones, from mechanics to automotive and transport in general, pneumatics and hydraulics, heat sinks, lighting technology and electronics, is significant and has grown over time, as we mentioned earlier.

Quality is guaranteed by important certifications and verified at every step: from the primary metal batch to the casting lot, from the alloy composition to the metallurgical characteristics of the billet sent to extrusion, from the finishing stages to the dimensional and performance tests of the profiles and systems placed on the market.

A&L: This year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of your Group, a long journey which has evidently developed in very positive terms from a business standpoint, giving you specialisation, success, notoriety and consequently also social responsibility. How do you perceive this in corporate terms?

All.Co: There is indeed one fixed point marking the company’s fifty years and linking the past to the present, and that is the company’s responsibility towards people and the territory. The future we foresee and are already thinking about will certainly go in that direction, following a deliberate choice on our part. For this reason, some of our current projects aim to equip All.Co with valid tools to evaluate its relationship with the community and the environment and make it virtuous.

These commitments lead us to the acquisition of new and more stringent certifications to manage quality, prevent defects, reduce waste in the supply chain, contain emissions, consumption, and waste, but also, on an ethical and methodical level, to the adoption of a sustainability report which makes transparent and public the economic, social and environmental results generated by the company in the performance of its activities, or to the definition of precise commitments on gender equality, for a corporate culture of full inclusiveness and respect for women’s skills.

For years this had been a point of great interest and reflection for our father, and for all of us in the company, what would be the priorities of tomorrow’s world (our world today): sustainability, energy saving, compatibility between the environment and human activities. He used to say that in the future we will look with increasing interest at the so-called green economy, at the set of factors which are giving the development of contemporary society an ever more marked ecological character, we deal with aluminium, the environmentally correct metal by definition; he added that if its use in the world is growing exponentially, it is not only because of its precious intrinsic qualities of lightness, durability and resistance, but also because it is perfect, it can be recycled one hundred per cent, countless times, and it can be worked without polluting.

There are many ways of interpreting sustainability in a sector such as industry, which by its very nature has a strong impact on the environmental balance of the planet; from our standpoint, we have chosen to continue moving in the direction of eco-sustainability, focusing on the systematic recovery of processing waste and the selected sourcing of scrap, from which today about sixty per cent of the quantities of molten metal for the extrusion billets we produce in our company derives. This means that recycling, alongside the traditional procurement of certified primary aluminium, covers more than half of our extrusion production. The image of our group, past and future, is reflected in this basic choice.

Read the full e-Magazine HERE, from where the interview is extracted.