War Room Business con Gabriele Clementi (El.En Group)

Well, first of all, I tell you that I am not surprised that the general public knows us little because from the very beginning we have always had a tendency to carry out the various productions and diversified activities that we have inside what, from the start, structured itself as a small group and gradually grew over the years, focusing attention not so much on the brand of the parent company, EL.En., from which the main ideas, the main research and development, and everything else, let's say management, come, but on the various brands that are linked to the type of production, both for the more specifically medical sector and the industrial one. So each sector, each sub-sector, has been and is covered through companies that are largely 100% controlled, in some cases instead participated or majority-controlled, precisely to have in each sector people and attention, almost maniacal, to the needs of that sector, and therefore a great specialization, because in today's world we believe that specialization is truly the winning key to success.

Well, this too is a question that objectively was easy to expect, because even here, from the beginning, since we are of engineering extraction (the name EL.En. stands for Electronic Engine, and the 'Ing' is our focus), our main focus has always been more attentive to the engineering of the product, therefore to everything related to production, the development of all those peculiar characteristics suitable for being winning in a certain application, rather than perhaps basic research, which fascinates us, we follow it, but on which we have always tended to rely on both Italian and foreign bodies that are dedicated to these. In Italy, for example, I can cite great collaborations we have had with CNR, with ENEA, and with various universities, starting with the University of Florence, to which belonged the late Professor Masotti, who with me, 40 years ago, on April 22, 40 years ago in '81, founded the company. This unfortunately could not participate in the celebrations of the fortieth anniversary of the foundation, which we would have held just these days. It was a great loss. In the meantime, happy birthday to the company, even if ten days or two weeks late. Then Brazil, France, Germany, obviously Italy, Japan, and as I mentioned before, also China. EL.En. is internationalization to the nth power.

Clearly, everything started from Italy, which has always remained at the top of our attention, our scientific and applicative life, also in the markets. Certainly, Italy we have always cultivated with great attention over time. The percentage of incidence of the Italian market has gradually decreased and now I would say that at the group level, it is in the order of 10-15 percent depending on the various activities. As for research and development, besides Italy, we have had a great boost also from our site in Germany, especially in the medical part in Jena, where, as many know, there is a very important optical technology district, even before the war in Germany. And there we drew heavily on a series of know-how that resided in that city through our 100% owned company called Asclepion, based in Jena, which has about 200 employees at the moment. In Italy, clearly, as I said before, all the universities that have dealt with laser applications over time have been very close to us, I would say decisive in our development. However, I would also mention in recent years a certain type of development we have done in China on the industrial side, facilitated by the enormous development that the industrial sector has had in that country, certainly driving at a global level.

A year ago in these days, you would have had answers in a very worried manner. It was a moment that was actually sad because in China, precisely, we have the historic plant, the first founded in China in 2005, which is in Wuhan, and which we had recently strengthened by expanding production spaces in 2019. Meanwhile, we had a second very important site, I would say the most important at the moment, in Wenzhou, about 300 kilometers south of Shanghai, where we have a large plant and a second plant already built and a third being set up. So, the problem started from Wuhan, Covid, and they closed the plant for more than two months. There it was not a yellow, pink, orange level; it was, as you saw on television, something where people could not leave home. So it was truly closed. And in Wenzhou the same, less than in Wuhan. So, Covid in China hit us almost deliberately, but then the restart was equally rapid, unlike in Europe and other parts of the Western world where the restart is still faltering. In China, the restart was very rapid and especially constant, which allowed us to inaugurate another part of the plant in the other city where we are present, in the northeast of China, and start with a great number of machines sold and installed, which objectively last year at this time I would never have dared to even remotely hope.

So in the sector, I would like to divide things a little because it is not easy to group the type of problems created by Covid into a single category. There have certainly been big problems at the hospital level, and this has created a delay in all the tenders for the award of new machinery, for example, in the field of urology, applied dermatology, otorhinolaryngology, etc. However, there have also been rebounds in private medicine, in some cases overall positive, because the desire to, how to say, take advantage of these moments, many from a work point of view, to fix some health problems of people, both for the purely aesthetic part and the functional one, I would say it increased precisely in preparation for being able to start again. So we had a certain positive return of orders from a number of states, also foreign, in private medicine, not trivial, not trivial, which allowed us to restart, let's say it, in a big way.

The things that are to come, maybe we don't talk about them even for such a trivial reason. That's why I haven't heard of the future; we are never even sure that they will really arrive. They are fully to the satisfaction of the clientele, so as they say, not all donuts come with a hole, and to have some winning ones, you have to think many, many more. Certainly, we are used to this and equipped from the beginning. I won't tell you the number of projects, sometimes even extremely valid, that we still have in the drawer, either because we don't yet consider the market mature enough to receive them, or because we are not yet fully confident to present them. But truly, all our collaborators, even during the lockdown, made it a principle, a duty to continue working from home, to think, perhaps even more than when there was in-person work. This moment of reflection was used to think about the future, why not, even in a big way. Not everything will come out of the drawer, but certainly in the drawer we have many, many things. And this can be the concept of resilience, which is what the reconstruction plan of the Draghi government also revolves around.

Certainly, what Confindustria said, we totally share. I personally, whenever I have found myself speaking with public figures, let's say, or politicians, in the rare times when we are invited to conferences where the future of Italy is discussed, I have always tried to stress this type of problem. On the other hand, it comes from afar, because already many years ago, you heard and saw in the cinema the parent who said to the child, 'You must study, you must study,' but the concept was always linked to a permanent job, understood as clerical work or as a bank employee. Think of what the bank employee was 50 years ago, 40 years ago, still 30 years ago, and alas, what they are today, the Balkans... The world is changing rapidly, and unfortunately the mentality within families, which has also infected the choices of young people, has not changed with equal rapidity. It is necessary to provide information, it is necessary to explain to families, explain to young people that the future is in technology, the future is in the desire for innovation, the future is in work understood as a constructive element of society, but not as something that society can provide so automatically to everyone, as in certain ideas of the past that were propagated, unfortunately it is not so. Certainly, it is not my place to break into the, how to say, into the shootout economy, which is completely detached from social issues, etc. Quite the opposite, but the social must be interpreted in a modern and dynamic way, and not as a grace received from heaven from the so-called state that provides everything, because by now the state can no longer provide everything.

As for the company, what I can say is that my most important project at my personal level in the coming years is precisely to try to guarantee the company a continuity of governance that allows it to continue on the path traced, without denying what have been our founding principles, but gradually adapting to the challenges that will be placed before us. So certainly some of the things that I brought personally, also together with the poor Professor Masotti, may no longer be current. I hope to identify people who will know how to combine our tradition and our, how to say, our approach, and combine it with an effective response to the challenges that await us. Certainly, in 40 years I fear I will certainly not be in this position, and so if I want to hope that in 40 years someone will come to interview the president of EL.En., at this moment my most important project must be this.