100 years of Zobele

April 2018 heralded the official announcement of the opening of a new plant in the United States, in Garland, Texas.

Zobele USA is a new Zobele Group challenge that invests in the "Laundry Care" product range.

The plant has been sized to support the growth plans agreed upon with Zobele Group’s key clients, its partners in taking this strategic step, and thus confirming the Group’s commitment to constant growth and to opening up new opportunities for further global development.

The heart of the Zobele Group innovation system is the Innovation Hub in Barcelona, created in 2008, consolidating the previous facility inherited from DBK.

The existing team has been integrated with new figures to bring other skills and an international scope to the work group, in the knowledge that only a really multicultural environment can effectively meet the strategic goals of a Group operating on a global scale.

Attention to different cultures is guaranteed also by the opening of a second innovation centre in Singapore in 2013, which also enabled the Company to get closer to its key clients’ research and innovation centres, facilitating cooperation with them.

The year 2008 saw the opening of a new plant in Bulgaria, to serve the European market with even more competitive prices.

Maria Stoikova, Customer Service Manager for many years and now Purchasing Manager for Zobele Bulgaria, has a clear memory of the birth of the production unit and its evolution since then: “I was the first employee at the new site. The first few months I was alone in an office with a desk, a phone and a coffee machine, but we soon moved to the Plovdiv site, where over the past 10 years I have witnessed the continuous growth of Zobele Bulgaria, in terms of customers, products and internal know-how and expertise. Now there are 350-400 employees depending on the time of year and we handle the European projects of the big multinationals, in close coordination always with headquarters in Trento”.

Last year the tenth anniversary of the Bulgarian site was celebrated with a major local event.

In 2003 Zobele implemented and valorised the acquisition of its biggest competitor worldwide, the Spanish DBK, thus attaining the role of indisputable leader in the sector and also taking over the overseas branches of DBK in Spain, Mexico and India.
After the initial step in 2000, when Zobele acquired 40% of shares, came the move to clinch a majority holding, followed by real integration between Zobele and DBK.

Dealing with other cultures, both in corporate as well as socio-relational terms, has not always been easy. Learning how to adapt to different systems and situations however, together with the value of cultural diversity, proved to be winning guidelines for Zobele, which beat the challenge of internationalisation achieving exponential growth in production, turnover and in its role as world leader in particular.

The Zobele Group began in this sector one hundred years ago and since then has maintained its global leadership.

The key factor to this success has been the continuous adoption of new technologies to improve the safety and effectiveness of the various solutions.

Here are the main products in our Pest Control range: aerosol insecticides, mosquito coils, insecticide sticks, insect traps, mosquito mats and liquid and their relative electrical heating devices, portable insecticides, repellents.

The picture shows the first models of insecticide heating devices and mats, the classic mosquito coils and the actual electrical heating devices for mats and liquid.

Having gained industrial leadership in Trentino and countrywide, the third generation of Zobele decided to focus on the overseas, given also the interest many client multinationals were showing in this new, immense and unexplored market.

Zobele’s first expansion abroad came about during the second half of the 1990s in South America: Brazil.

The choice was dictated by the international economic scene which, with the increase in import duties by 25%, made the launch of a production unit in loco the only way to continue trading with that country.

It was 1998 when Zobele do Brasil opened in Porto Alegre, moving to Cachoeirinha a few years ago, with a production area that expanded from 700 m² to its current 15,000 m².

In the Eighties, with the move to the new production unit, the Zobele family nonetheless recognised the problems that certain workers would have in getting to the new premises, located in an area of the city which at the time was in the open countryside, and as such isolated and without any public transport.
Hence the company made agreements with Atesina, the Trento public transport company, to provide a shuttle service to take employees from the station to Via Fersina and back again at the end of the day.

Once again, the company owners showed their commitment towards maintaining a warm and comfortable working environment. This was further confirmed in other decisions, like the creation of communal areas inside the company, the canteen and  the introduction of Christmas parties.

By the 1960s, the space in the factory in Via Muredei was already too small for the growing number of workers and machinery for production.

Born in Trento on 30 December 1950, the first-born of Luigi Zobele, first descendant of the family’s third generation, baptised with the same name of his entrepreneurial grandfather.

Enrico Zobele, having finished his studies in business and economics with a specialisation in commercial businesses obtained from Milan’s Bocconi university, joined the company in 1973, flanking his father in the sales branch, and soon accompanying him in his long travels abroad.

Under his guidance, and marked by a strong drive and world view developed in the company of his father, he launched the internationalisation policy of the Eighties, promoting the company to the point of making it a leading multinational in its field. Its leadership in 1994 led to his appointment as CEO.

Enrico, besides his role at the helm of the company, also became a point of reference in the Trentino business scene and much more, a testament to his passion, the strategic vision of his actions and his absolute decisiveness. In the past he has filled prestigious role such as chairman of Confindustria Trento and the Trento and Rovereto Cassa di Risparmio Foundation.

He is currently President of Zobele Group and Chairman and CEO of Everel Group, the company producing electronic and electromechanical components based in Valeggio (Verona).

The Sixties constituted the real test of Enrico's heirs’ ability to harness the dynamics of the economic boom, without ever losing sight of the human dimension that had strongly characterized the company's origins.
The two leading products of the company, Spiralette and scouring pads, allowed the company to double its turnover in those years and gain many positions in the market.

The climate in Via Muredei remained a familial one, and its workers were well looked after. Small adjustments made the working environment comfortable: for example, there was a room with tables and stools for the lunch break and the workers’ locker rooms were equipped with showers. At certain times of the year, like Good Friday, the factory held a liturgical celebration, after which the people would all go to the Prati bar in Trento, where a large Easter breakfast was served, with cups of hot chocolate.

Fascinated by an article read in the newspaper Corriere della Sera about production machines for steel wool, Luigi started looking for a technical solution for the production of scouring pads for domestic use, a product widely used in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

In Italy there was no suitable machinery for the job, and the German machines were very costly, but the two brothers managed to find a unit at an acceptable price, to which Fulvio made the necessary modifications and improvements to ease the production process. The rolls of steel wool that were produced took the name of "pagliette" (scouring pads), whose abrasive function was considered very useful for cleaning specific surfaces.

And so, clever intuition combined with talent led to the birth of a new line of products, developed in steel wool rolls with 3 varieties of grain, called “Nazionale”, “Americana” and “Mobilieri”, and in two products for cleaning pots: rolls and soap-filled scouring pads.

During the post-war period, Trentino found itself in a state of underdevelopment and the Zobele Chemical Products Factory promptly set about making some structural and organisational changes. Enrico Zobele Senior began to pass down the secrets of the business and management skills to his two sons, Luigi and Fulvio. He died in 1950, but only after having entrusted his heirs with the helm of the company.

The new Zobele generation had to immediately face the threat of DDT arriving from the US to the Italian market: "dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane" was a chemical product initially used to prevent malaria, typhoid and other insect-borne diseases, later converted into a generic pesticide in spray format. Simple and effective, it put the demand for the flycatcher at risk and, therefore, it became essential to expand the range of products in the Zobele catalogue. This convinced the two brothers to start rethinking the products and the target markets.

At the end of the 1930s, the Fabbrica Chimica Zobele, at the peak of its prosperity, was able to invest in the construction of a larger premises.

In 1939, the company moved to Via Muredei 2/4 - Trento, into a structure made up of three spaces: one building for offices, one for production and the third as warehouse.  At full capacity, the factory had more than 300 employees who achieved a monthly turnover of one million Lire, while the product catalogue expanded.

Located between two railway lines, one national and the other local, both strategic targets of military bombings during World War II, Enrico Zobele Senior decided to limit damage in 1943 by transferring all the machinery into cellars in less sensitive areas nearby. All this was possible thanks to the collaboration of all the workers, who felt increasingly bound to the company by a bond of solidarity that transcended any roles and positions they held.

The second half of the 1920s was characterized by a worldwide economic recovery: industrial production and trade grew while the monetary system began to work again. However, the deflationary policies of Fascism combined with the effects of the financial crisis of 1929 aggravated the economic situation in Trentino, causing the closure of many banking institutions and the consequent loss of deposit savings of the local population.

Despite this negative economic climate, the Fabbrica Industrie Chimiche Enrico Zobele was enjoying a period of prosperity that allowed investment in new machineries for fly catchers, the first of which was bought in Prague and adapted by an ingenious local mechanic, who then, by the end of the 30’s, constructed another 7 automatic machines, increasing production up to 130,000 pieces per day.

Luigi Zobele (1921 - 2008) the eldest son of Enrico Zobele senior and Emma Hafner, together with his brother Fulvio, was a fundamental reference in the development of the Chemical Products Factory until the 2000s.

After high school he graduated in Chemical Engineering and joined the company in 1946. Luigi was the one who had the brilliant intuition on the potential success of steel wool, which allowed the company to grow in contrast with the local economy of the 1950s, still behind in the industrial sector. Together with his brother, he worked to promote the return of Zobele in the field of insecticides, starting the first production of anti-mosquito spirals in the sixties and then the mats in the seventies. The positive path in this sector will continue with the entry into the company of his son Enrico, when started the business of the first electrical devices, which led the company in 1975 to double the turnover and to increase the productive capacity by 100%.

Known as “l’Ingegner Gino” and well-liked by everyone, he is remembered as a person with a spontaneous and extroverted character, determined and pragmatic, with a strong commercial instinct, a traveler who was constantly looking for new products and markets for the family company.

(From the right: Luigi, his father, his mother and his brother Fulvio)

Founded by the Romans, expanding in medieval times and historically famous for the Council and its Bishops, formerly part of Austro-Hungarian Empire, at the end of the First World War the city of Trento was annexed to Italy.

The entrepreneurial spirit of the young Enrico Zobele remained, despite the epochal change, determined to face the negative context; a new currency and the wartime destruction of infrastructures, industries and agricultural areas made any supplying of goods activity particularly difficult.

Within this context the first Zobele business was born, located at the beginning in a large room in via Mariani 8, Trento and then in a building of about forty meters for ten behind the old family house, located in Corso III Novembre, 20, where started the proper industrial production, centred mainly on flypapers and birdlime.