Ercole Marelli Group

Our History

OUR HISTORY

 

The company Ercole Marelli was founded in 1891 in Milan on the initiative of Ercole Marelli, youth worker at Tecnomasio Italiano in Milan.

Initially, the company manufactures electromechanical devices and, since 1896, undertakes the manufacture of “air agitators” (today’s fans), previously imported from the United States, becoming in few years one of the leading companies in the sector, in the World.

On 28 February 1900 the sole proprietorship becomes a limited partnership and in December 1905 the company opened in Sesto San Giovanni a great facility, served by the tramway Milan-Monza-Sesto, where employs skilled labor from Milan and unskilled local workers.

Here the company produce, in addition to fans, small electric motors, centrifugal pumps and transformers.

Between 1906 and 1911 people employed rose from 500 to 1,500, half of them young women involved in the “winding up” engines.

In 1920 the company changed its name, becoming joint-stock Limited Company and in 1922, with the death of Ercole Marelli, is inherited by his son Fermo.

At that time was elected as Chief Executive Officer, Antonio Stefano Benni, who collaborated with Ercole Marelli since the beginning, who directs the Company until the second world war.
With Benni direction the company marks a major turning point in financial policy and production.

It strongly increases the production of large machinery, such as alternators and high power transformers, for the most important Italian companies in the energy sector and for many foreign companies.

During the thirties a big boost was done to testing and production of innovative control systems for rolling mills, provided the major Italian steel, as Falck, Terni, Italsider.
They also enhance the other productive sectors such as the massive machine propulsion for ships and those of electrical equipment for rail and road.

In the traditional sector of production of electric, commitment and aimed at special applications for water and drainage works.

The company grows enough to record an increase in the workforce, on the eve of World War II, exceeded 5,000 units.

After the Liberation, the reins of the company pass to the son of Ercole, Fermo Marelli, which continues on the lines of the previous management.

The Company has the greatest development in the Second World War, and in 1963 the group employed 7,100 Ercole Marelli touches.

Beginning in 1968, to meet lower prices in the electromechanical sector, the company began a phase of radical restructuring and is reorganized into 4 divisions: Energy, Industrial Plants and Systems traction and marine products series, Aerotecnics.
The Energy Division, called Ercole Marelli Power, continues in the historical place of Sesto San Giovanni all the activities of Engineering, Machining, Production of New Hydrogenerators, Steam Turbines and Hydroturbogenerators, as well as cogeneration and trigeneration, for the most important italian and foreign groups.

In January 2009, for market reasons, the company decided to transfer all its activities in a new plant in Albania, where continued the production of synchronous generators with rated power between 10MVA and 150MVA.

Thanks to reduced costs of production and management, Ercole Marelli Power conquer new markets and so international customers.

In 2010, to meet the growing demands of new hydro markets of the Balkans, Ercole Marelli Power inaugurates new production line for synchronous generators of rated power between 1MVA and 10MVA, made on the basis of new designs for modular production, increasingly based on Ercole Marelli Power technology production of stator coils in Samicaterm and polar coils with copper strips.

This technology, which is at the base of the indestructibility of generators produced by Ercole Marelli Power allows, unlike the production technology of generators impregnated coils, which are irreparable in fact, the ability to replace any defective coils, restoring as new the functionality of the generator, and at very low cost.

In 2011, to meet better the needs of private clients that require installation of turnkey hydro power stations, Ercole Marelli Power becomes part of Ercole Marelli Group, which include also the production lines of turbines, switchgears for electrical control, medium and high voltage substations, and power transformers.

With this integrated productive force, the Ercole Marelli Group represent in the international market the only interlocutor, capable of providing turnkey power plants for energy production, consisting of equipment made directly into their production lines.