Home / News / ORCA opens third branch for carbon fabrics & composites

ORCA opens third branch for carbon fabrics & composites

19 Jul '19

3 min read

Pic: Orca

ORCA has announced the set-up of its third branch dedicated to carbon fabrics and high-tech composite materials, with Angeloni, ITT, Dynanotex, and Impregnatex as partners, in a single and integrated entity. The company is an innovator in the composites industry and known as a manufacturer of engineered fabrics and coated fabrics for niche markets.

ORCA’s management and shareholders have identified carbon and composites material as a highly attractive market, complementary with its current range of technical textiles and films. After the acquisitions of Pennel & Flipo in 2015, then Fait Plast in 2017, ORCA continues and accelerates its strategy to build a pan-European player in highly technical engineered materials. ORCA has decided to vertically integrate four companies in order to create Angeloni, a unique entity offering expertise, innovation, efficiency, and flexibility to customers operating in the technical composite materials market, according to a press release by the company.

Angeloni, founded in 1927 and based in Quarto d’Altino, is a trading company for composite raw materials, in particular for carbon fabrics. ITT, founded in 1998 and based in Lesmo, develops reinforced textiles or fabrics based on high tech fibres. Dynanotex, founded in 2007 and based in Quarto d’Altino, develops special reinforcements through patented technologies. Impregnatex Compositi, founded in 1976 and based in Castano Primo, develops pre-preg reinforcements.

The unification into a single vertically integrated group (from weaving through impregnation to distribution) is designed to provide efficient solutions, high level of service, as well as reactivity and reliability in the supply to customers with the objective to address niche markets around the world. With the successful previous integration of Fait Plast, ORCA has already demonstrated its will to respect history and culture of the different entities, its capacity to reinforce human resources and its commitment to industrial investments to support growth on the long run.

By capitalising on the support of the historical founders and board members of these four companies, ORCA management will bring its best practices: excellence in operations management, capacity to develop innovative products and sound financial management. ORCA is already a strong and established player in flexible composites industry, positioned on elastomer coated textiles and thermoplastic multilayers films, with regular growth, operating two state-of-the-art production sites in Belgium and Italy and benefit from a worldwide commercial network, including subsidiaries in the US, China, and Russia.

With these four acquisitions, ORCA is becoming also a top producer of carbon fabrics in Europe, covering and operating all the value chain. Mario and Marco Angeloni, the historical shareholders of Angeloni, and Claudio Torno, the founder of Impregnatex, will reinvest into the operation, hold their managerial position during a transition period and they shall enter the new Board of Directors. Moreover, the second generation of Angeloni and Torno families will gain in responsibility in order to anticipate the future development of the companies. (GK)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk – India