Franco Tosi Meccanica (FTM)

Franco Tosi Meccanica
S.p.A. (Public limited company as defined under Italian law)
Industry Heavy machinery and energy technology
(previously also submarines and boats)
Founded 1874 (Cantoni Krumm & C.)
from 1894 "Franco Tosi”
Headquarters Legnano near Milan, Italy
Area served
 Worldwide
Key people
 Franco Tosi, Eugenio Cantoni
Products Turbines, Boilers, Heat exchangers and pumps
Revenue 85 Mio. € (2006)[1]
Number of employees
 ca. 600 (2008),
formerly ca. 6000 (1970s)
Website www.francotosimeccanica.it

Franco Tosi (formerly known as Franco Tosi & C., now called Franco Tosi Meccanica) is an Italian engineering business currently concentrated on the production of Turbines, Boilers, Heat exchangers and pumps. It is located in Legnano near Milan. The firm was created during the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century by the engineer Franco Tosi (1858 – 1898).

History and products

Thermoelectric generator "Regina Margherita", exhibited at the Museo nazionale della scienza e della tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci of Milan.

Franco Tosi grew out of an engineering business called, originally, Cantoni Krumm & C., which Tosi himself joined as Technical Director in 1876. The firm had originated a couple of years earlier (1874) as a producer, primarily, of textile machinery, but under Tosi’s leadership it rapidly reinvented itself as a producer of steam engines, which Tosi had developed for use as the power source for industrial looms. These formed the basis for the company’s rapid growth in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. Tosi soon became a shareholder, and in 1881 the company also took his name. In 1894 he became the sole shareholder.[2][3]

Some time later in 1907, the business diversified into the production of diesel engines, which was then a rapidly growing market sector. For a time Ettore Maserati, one of the five brothers who later founded Maserati, worked as a designer of diesel engines for “Franco Tosi”, which was also cooperating with the motorbike producer, Emilio Bozzi.

In 1914, shortly before the start of the First World War, Tosi established as a subsidiary business a shipyard at Taranto in the south of the country for the production of submarines and ships, destined primarily for the Italian navy. During the 1920s a submarine from this shipyard achieved a world-wide depth record, descending to 75 meters below sea level.

In the 1930s the football team from the Tosi shipyard in Taranto participated in the first division of the Italian football league.

After the Second World War, „Franco Tosi“ collaborated with two large US corporation called General Electric and Combustion Engineering, producing under licence large steam turbines and boilers of American design. Turbine components were also produced. The 1970s saw the number of employees peaking at more than 6,000.

The early 1990s was a time of world-wide crisis for producers of power generation equipment, and “Franco Tosi” found itself taken over by Ansaldo, the resulting combine being taken over in 1993 by Finmeccanica and integrated into that company’s energy division under the name AnsaldoEnergia. However, this resulted in a concentration of control in the Italian energy sector which attracted the attention of the Competition Authority. In response to pressure from the regulator the integration of Finmeccanica was reversed, and ownership of “Franco Tosi” transferred, in 2000, to the Cast Group. At was at this point that the business acquired its current name, "Franco Tosi Meccanica S.p.A.".

On 25 July 2013 the bankruptcy court in Milan declared the company insolvent.[4]

On 9 June 2015 Presezzi Group acquired the business of Franco Tosi Meccanica which includes among other:

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Franco Tosi Meccanica.

References

  1. ↑ A-Tec will in den Turbinenbau einsteigen auf handelsblatt.com (abgerufen am 17. Juli 2009)
  2. ↑ Tosi, Franco, in: Matschoss, Conrad: Männer der Technik. Ein biographisches Handbuch, hrsg. im Auftrage des Vereines Deutscher Ingenieure. Berlin: Springer, 1925, XI, 306 S., auf digitalis.uni-koeln.de
  3. ↑ Franco Tosi auf albert-gieseler.de
  4. ↑ "Tosi: dichiarato stato insolvenza per l'azienda di Legnano". Libero. 25 July 2013. Retrieved 27 luly 2013. Check date values in: |access-date= (help)

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Monday, April 25, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.