2020-2022 Business Plan. Focus on digitalization, product innovation, expansion of the network, and one-company business model.

The Group's three-year plan, approved by the Board of Directors on 21^st February, confirms and reinforces a strategy aimed at expanding the digital connected factory to an increasingly diverse target and making automated solutions accessible to all, from small business to large industry, guided by a forward-looking business approach inspired by circular economy and sustainable business thinking.
 
This is a strategic plan based on the values that underpin the Group's every decision – Innovation, Integrity, and Proactivity – and on a Vision that reminds us, like a mantra, to “look ahead and anticipate the future by setting new standards for technological innovation and digital transformation”. It is the embryo from which all our success has grown, from our origins in Pesaro in 1969 to international industry leader listed on the STAR segment of the Milan Stock Exchange with 39 subsidiaries around the world, more than 300 dealers/agents, and nearly 4,200 employees who strive every day to satisfy customers and achieve our global objectives.
 
Today the Group operates in four business sectors, under four brands owned by the parent company: Biesse, Intermac, Diamut, and the brand specialized in solutions for Mechatronics. Through its world-class industrial facilities featuring the most up-to-date manufacturing processes, it serves customers in 120 countries – manufacturers of furniture, door & window frames, and components for construction, ship-building and aerospace industries – attaining excellence in industry and design.
 
“For the three-year period 2020-2022 we have scheduled net investments of around Euro 116 million. Our strategy will concentrate on our offers by strengthening digitalization and product innovation, as we reorganize processes and expand our sales network, with a special focus on the new business sectors where we have substantial margins for growth," said the Biesse's Managing Director, Stefano Porcellini, when the plan was published.
Specifically, the three-year vision focuses on developing and strengthening the four pillars that have driven the Group's recent success and will remain strategic assets for the future:

• Fortification of the digitalization process introduced a few years ago to ensure digital, automated factories connected to all customers, thanks to software solutions and advanced services through SOPHIA, the IOT platform the Group has developed in partnership with Accenture that gives customers access to a range of services to simplify and streamline the workflow while optimizing the performance and productivity of the technologies.

• Product innovation: by investing 4% of annual revenue in research & development, the Group improves its products by strengthening existing technological solutions for wood, advanced materials, glass & stone, and ceramics and by working to explore and develop new solutions that will raise technological standards in its markets.

• Network expansion, with a view to increasing brand awareness in sectors where the Group is a relative newcomer and has extensive potential for growth, such as advanced materials, structural wood, and metal. Beyond these newer sectors, the Group plans to achieve more extensive coverage of the global market by opening three new subsidiaries over the three-year period, continuing the international expansion it has pursued for the last twenty years.    

• Implementation of the One Company model to ensure continued growth, by following a global management approach based on synergies and promoting fertilization across headquarters, divisions, and subsidiaries, reinforcing a global leadership model to support a cohesive, independent management team, providing IT solutions to facilitate global processes.

 
The Group believes firmly in training and professional development, as proven by Academy, the dedicated training centre for Group personnel, dealers, and customers. We reward individual and collective merit and invest in the new generations: bucking the youth unemployment trend witnessed throughout the country, over the past three years the Group has hired 500 employees under the age of 35, and backed up this strategy with significant technical and managerial training.
 
This global, structured plan, tailored to our customers (as always our primary focus), is supported by constant investment in training and events at our Campuses: places where customers can experience our culture, meet experts, see technologies up close, and be among the first to discover new trends in the world of design, materials, and technology. The Sydney Biesse Campus and the Ulm Biesse Campus were both inaugurated in 2019, and in 2020 the Group will open a new Moscow Campus to better serve the Russian market.
 
Around the world, a new business and production model is taking root that recognizes the need to blend economic growth with social development and environmental sustainability until a new business paradigm is achieved. An integral part of the plan is our active commitment to environmental, social, and economic sustainability, which is beginning to bear fruit: an increase of 37.5% since the previous year in solar panels installed, more than 100,000 hours of training during the year, an 89% rate of purchasing from local suppliers by our production sites. It also offers a window into the Group's primary goals for 2020 on the issues of environmental sustainability and safety, to be explained in depth in our Sustainability Report, due out in the month of March.
 
The financial press release and the public version of our three-year business plan can be consulted on the Biesse's website (Investor Relations area).