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| The History |
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1. Prior Events
Economic development created widespread social unrest that resulted in the birth of the socialist movement. Established also thanks to the commitment of leaders like Camillo Prampolini and Antonio Vergnanini, the movement gained ground in Reggio Emilia and its province at the beginning of the 20th century despite the elitist electoral law. Way back in 1899, the provincial administration had already proposed to build a railway link to make it easier to travel between Reggio Emilia and an important area where Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese was produced. The contract was assigned to SAFRE (Società Anonima delle Ferrovie di Reggio Emilia), which was asked to employ solely personnel from the cooperatives, but refused. The socialist movement seized the opportunity to present its own candidate as an alternative to that of a private capital firm. Construction of a railway between Reggio Emilia and Ciano d'Enza would encourage the cooperative system to make a qualitative leap since it would have to deal with entrepreneurial issues and direct management of public services. The people’s self-government of the area through all-over cooperation was the philosophy of Prampolini and Vergnanini. | |
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2. 1904-1919: the foundation and establishment of the Consortium
The individual cooperatives were not economically strong enough to compete for the contract, neither did they possess the required technical structure. Thus they decided to join forces in a Consortium.“Consorzio delle Società Cooperative di Lavoro e Produzione della Provincia di Reggio Emilia” (CCPL) was established on 16 October 1904, with its headquarters in Reggio Emilia, in the Trade Union Centre of via Farini. The memorandum of association was signed by the chairmen of twenty-seven cooperatives situated in the province. The initial registered capital amounted to 67,920 lira and comprised 1,132 shares worth 60 lira each (equivalent to € 217.30), of which 462 were underwritten by the founder cooperatives and 670 by individual cooperative members. The provincial administration, which tended towards Socialism, assigned the Consortium with the task of building and running the Reggio-Ciano railway on 4 November 1904. Guided by Giuseppe Menada and known as "Grande Armata", the moderate front was unexpectedly called upon to govern the Municipality on 16 May 1904, to the detriment of the Socialists; neither was Prampolini re-elected as deputy in his constituency. In 1906, the provincial administration was once again in moderate hands. Despite the difficulties, the Consortium started work on the railway in August 1907 and shouldered the responsibility for this decision as the project had still to be approved. The enterprise soon became imbued with values that were far more important than issues of a merely economic nature: it turned into a challenge that epitomized the desire to establish a social emancipation process derided by the moderates and the local humouristic press. For the workers’ and Socialist movement, construction of the railway became a people’s epic that began to acquire an increasingly more symbolic connotation on an even international scale. So much so, that it was upheld as an example by Charles Gide, executive officer of the International Cooperative Alliance. The construction work terminated on 15 January 1911 and the Consortium, which numbered 105 operators, embarked upon the new railway management and maintenance phase, which was not the Consortium’s sole activity. This was because the establishment of the Consortium stemmed from an industrial vocation expressed by a network of cooperatives that were more than able to deal with a whole range of public works. The Consortium’s memorandum of association was extended to include “contracts for the construction of public works and private works of all kinds and running of business and industrial undertakings” (art. 2). The Gardenia quarter, where private companies and cooperatives worked side by side, became the place where the Consortium experimented its various different activities. This was where the first house for railway workers was built. CCPL helped towards Socialist recovery of the Municipality with the Istituto Case Popolari (Council Housing Institute). Subsidized housing was also built in Piazzale Fiume in 1910 followed by the workers’ housing of Porta Castello in 1919. The annual balance sheet of the Consortium was divided into two parts: the “railway accounts and the “works accounts”. The Consortium acquired a technical structure allowing it to branch out to this second sector. In 1911, along with Cooperativa Muratori di Reggio Emilia, the Consortium took part in the reconstruction of the city of Messina, which had been destroyed by an earthquake three years previously. At the end of the First World War, the Consortium was assigned the task of piloting the re-organization process for the local cooperative system, which had become very weak. To do this, the “works branch” was separated from the railway sector and became the business purpose of “Consorzio Reggiano delle Cooperative di Lavoro e Produzione”, established in Reggio Emilia and recognized with decree N° 1381 of 6 July 1919. This new Consortium comprised the Masons and Labourers, Carpenters and Cement Layers Cooperatives of Reggio Emilia and the Labourers and Masons Cooperative of Guastalla. The Chairman, headquarters (the Trade Union Centre), executives and technicians were those of the previous Consortium. Consorzio Reggiano is rather a background to the subsequent vicissitudes of CCPL, the history of which will now be described, rather than that of the railway Consortium. The meeting of 23-09-1919 elected the first Board of Directors. The Chairman was Giovanni Bolognesi, who headed Cooperativa Muratori di Reggio Emilia. Bolognesi died just one month later and was substituted by Giacomo Vezzani, chairman of Cooperativa Falegnami di Reggio Emilia. | |
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3. 1920-1945: Fascist cooperation takes over the Consortium
During its first twenty years, Consorzio Reggiano focused on the provision of services and back-up in favour of the cooperative associates: in 1921, it created its own “Provincial technical office for the construction cooperatives” financed by the subscriber cooperatives themselves.Negotiations with the provincial administration for the construction of the Reggio-Boretto (or Reggio-Po) railway were concluded in 1922. Consorzio Reggiano was assigned the building work while Consorzio Reggio-Ciano was to run the facility. The two Consortia always endeavoured to perform their work in the area in the best possible way but meanwhile, the political crisis got out of control: the Fascist action squads conducted the first attacks in Reggio Emilia on the headquarters of workers’ organizations like the Trade Union centre, the “La Giustizia” printing works and the Socialist clubs. The staff members of the two Consortia became involved when the Trade Union Centre was attacked and Eng. Giuseppe Cerino actually had to flee from Reggio Emilia along with two other executives. In 1922, the headquarters of Consorzio Reggiano moved to Corso Garibaldi 12, where it remained until 1956. Pressure from the Fascist authorities, which strived to undermine the public’s favourable opinion of Socialist cooperation, caused Consorzio Reggiano to lose two of its cooperatives: these were the Birocciai (Carters) and Braccianti (Labourers) cooperatives, both of Guastalla. Moreover, many of the cooperatives abandoned the Trade Union Centre in order to register with the Fascist corporative Unions. Other cooperatives, like Muratori, the Masons’ cooperative of Reggio Emilia, preferred to have themselves liquidated rather than subscribe to the Fascist organizations. Cooperativa Pittori (the Painters’ Cooperative) maintained its independence by converting into a public limited company. In order to save what they could, the Hon. Arturo Bellelli, secretary of the CdL, met Mussolini in 1923 and asked him to prevent the cooperatives from being eliminated and the conquests achieved from being voided. In 1923, the Socialist cooperative movement attempted to establish a Provincial Federation of cooperatives with a view to unifying all the political entities involved, including those of the Fascist type. This initiative, which was never converted into reality, was followed by a proposal from Natale Prampolini, representative of the Fascist regime: turn Consorzio Reggiano into a Federazione Reggiana di Cooperative Nazionali (Federation of National Cooperatives of Reggio Emilia). The refusal of Consorzio Reggiano encouraged the regime to look for other solutions. In 1924, the eight cooperatives that worked on the Reggio-Boretto railway established the Consorzio tra Cooperative di Produzione e Lavoro Fasciste (CCPLF) in a document dated 11 September 1924, d.l. 1516. The headquarters was situated in Reggio Emilia, via De Amicis, 22. The Board of Directors of the Fascist Consortium was chaired by Luigi Benfatti, while the managing director was Eng. Enrico Nasi from Rolo. Now controlled by the Fascist regime, the provincial administration deprived Consorzio Reggiano of the concession and gave it to SAFRE, which took over the management of the railway and assigned the building works to CCPLF. Consorzio Reggio-Ciano was drawn into the regime's organizational system in 1926. The provincial administration ousted SAFRE and re-assigned the Reggio-Boretto works to Consorzio Reggio-Ciano, thus combining the two railway lines as to their management. Once the “Matteotti crisis” had been overcome, the Fascist government passed six prefectorial decrees to prevent the cooperatives from being wound up and their capitals from being divided amongst their members. The most important local cooperatives and Consorzio Reggiano were put under temporary receivership in 1925. Dante Giordano (secretary of the Fascist unions and auditor of the Fascist Consortium) was nominated as commissar of the Trade Union Centre, of CCPL and of Consorzio Reggiano. On 30 October 1926, when Mussolini visited Reggio Emilia to inaugurate the 29 km Reggio-Boretto railway line, the situation had more or less got back to normal. In January 1928, Dante Giordano concluded the merger between the Fascist Consortium and Consorzio Reggiano (after it had been stripped of all its economic resources). The headquarters was still located in via Garibaldi 12, in the offices that were once used by the former Consorzio Reggiano. In 1929, the chairmanship of the Consortium was assigned for the first time to an executive from outside the area. This person was Arnaldo Galliani, a surveyor from Bologna connected to Giovanni Fabbrici of Novellara, an influential member of the regime. Galliani’s management introduced a whole range of different activities: land reclaiming, earth movement and large building works. The province began to be too small for the productive capacity of the Consortium and the associated cooperatives. The shortage of work resulted in a cut in prices that fostered dangerous competition between the Consortium and the cooperatives that belonged to it. The growing drop in demand prevented the statutory minimum wage from being guaranteed, thus the field had to be abandoned to the cooperative associates in the province. The Consortium had to acquire the funds it needed to maintain its organization beyond the provincial boundaries while lowering the prices of the services it provided for the associated cooperatives themselves. The national importance of its chairman was also instrumental in helping the Consortium to acquire several job orders. These included the seaplane station of Pontesella di Pola, the airmen’s barracks of the airport of Parma, the barracks of Cadimare in the Gulf of La Spezia (designed by CCPLF and built by Cooperativa Muratori of Gattatico). The growing size of the works led to hefty investments in equipment that became a precious resource during the great crisis of 1929: the Consortium was able to carry out any job required. Technological modernization and the endeavour to achieve an increasingly more efficient management were part of a political strategy that tended to establish the Consortium to an even greater extent without wasting its professional skills, even if this meant underscoring its leanings towards Socialist cooperation. This led to a certain degree of tolerance in relation to the dissenting cooperatives, some of which found room in the Consortium and cover for their activities in opposition to the regime. The effects of the crisis were overcome during the latter half of the thirties thanks to job orders for construction work on military infrastructures. Alongside the important land reclaiming work and construction of civil buildings in the province, the Consortium helped with the construction of the airports of Pavullo (MO) and Reggio Emilia, and as well as the building work, also designed the airport of Rieti. Other construction sites were opened in Albania and the Lower Volturno area. But alongside the signs of economic recovery, there was also growing tension between the Consortium and the larger cooperatives, which wanted to bid for contracts on their own behalf. Galliani resigned in 1932 and Luigi Alberici of Cooperativa Muratori di Boretto took his place. The Consortium concentrated its efforts on military jobs, while the whole organization suffered when the workers began to be called up. Despite its weakened technical structure, the Consortium was forced to embark upon work outside the province, in which the associated cooperatives decided not to become involved. Legal practitioner Carlo Lasagni took over from Mariani as chairman on 2 July 1943. During the meeting of 29 July 1943, just a few days before the fall of Fascism and Mussolini’s arrest, the word "Fascist" was eliminated from the name of the Consortium, which became CCPL once again. In view of the changes in the political climate, Lasagni resigned during the violent days of the summer of 1943, but the meeting confirmed him as chairman while Roberto Bolognesi became the managing director. In the last two years of the war, the activities were mainly concentrated on assisting Officine Reggiane (heavily bombed) and on jobs commissioned by the German organization Todt (anti-tank works, road repairs, clearing rubble, etc.). With a view to increasing its aggregate excavation potential, the Consortium decided to purchase the crushing plant of Montecchio in 1944. | |
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4. 1945 – 1970: The season of major works
After Liberation, the three antifascist parties that appealed to the masses formed a single union organization and a single provincial cooperation centre: Federazione provinciale delle cooperative (Federcoop). The Chairman was Socialist Arturo Bellelli, who had been secretary of the Trade Union Centre since 1925, while the Vice-chairman was the Christian Democrat Eng. Villani.On 8 May 1945, Vittorio Pellizzi, the prefect of the National Liberation Committee (CLN), appointed the official receivers of the Consortium: the accountant Pietro Negroni, Communist, as chairman; the surveyor Alberto Pasini, Christian Democrat, as vice-chairman; Ivano Curti, Socialist, eng. Dante Montanari, Socialist, as directors. The provisional Commission then removed from their offices those employees who had compromised themselves with Fascism and audited the balance sheet. On 15 July 1945, the Assembly elected the bodies of the Consortium with Ivano Curti as chairman. The three antifascist parties nominated the ethics and disciplinary committee comprising Arturo Bellelli (Socialist), Giuseppe Dossetti (Christian Democrat and one of the fathers of the Italian Constitution) and Cesare Campioli (Communist), mayor of the city. Technical skills and political values, both expressed at the very highest level, formed a heritage of “good reputation” to which the Consortium entrusted the defense of its functional autonomy. Eng. Dante Montanari was confirmed as Director but was substituted in 1946 by Managing director Dino Iori. The cooperatives and the local authorities called upon the Consortium to promote employment and development in the area. With initiatives that triggered off the “reverse strikes” organized by unions and cooperatives, the Consortium invented jobs by launching out on operations even when a return on investment was uncertain: it began to dismantle the military works built by the Todt Organization and to repair the bombing damage to Officine Reggiane and the CCFR. The agreements were to begin work immediately for payments that were to be extended over time. The Consortium used its own financial resources so that the work activities could be resumed. The Consortium helped the brick factory of Bibbiano by stepping in and supporting an initiative that was the fruit of people’s enthusiasm but without adequate skills or means. The business name of the Consortium was changed to “Consorzio Cooperative di Produzione e Lavori di Reggio Emilia” on 15 September 1946. The tension within the Consortium that had surfaced during the last few years of the Fascist regime still made itself felt even after the Liberation. The Consortium’s expanding coordination activities were felt to be an unnatural interference with the role of the associated organizations. Some of the cooperatives protested because the Consortium centralized the accounting services for their employees’ pay-packets while they were merely the forwarding address. Others complained when the Consortium was assigned work in Verona, Cremona, Pistoia and Faenza and demanded the right to take part in the bids on their own behalf. Curti’s managerial role and political importance helped to steer the Consortium away from this deadlock since it became necessary to deal with the crisis created by the changing times: the carters’ cooperatives, which dated back to when horses were used for transport, the powerful labourers’ cooperatives established when land re-claiming work was required and the mountain cooperatives all experienced an inevitable decline. The technical structure also had to be capitalized and developed, the human resources needed to be trained and the assets and capitals had to be protected against waste caused by managerial crises sustained by the individual cooperatives. In Curti’s opinion, the solution to all this was to enlarge the market: for the first time, the Consortium was entrusted with the job of building a factory in Poland and the Iacp quarter in viale Omero, Milan. Between the years 1950 and 1953, the Fanfani Plan for council housing allowed the Consortium to obtain lots of INA Casa contracts in Milan. The chief town of Lombardy became a workshop in which the Consortium grew stronger along with the cooperatives that faced the development challenge. The construction sites in Milan allowed the cooperatives to assess the operating methods of the capitalist enterprise and compare them with their own: CCPL’s methods were easier on the employees than those of the metropolis, where the workers were paid according to a job-work system and the construction site organization did not include social security measures. The new headquarters, built in the area where Palazzo Vallisneri Vicedomini (former Casa Guatteri) once stood (between Corso Garibaldi and via S. Zenone 2) was inaugurated in 1956. The construction, which included offices, shops and apartments, housed the Consortium’s headquarters while Coop1, the first cooperative supermarket, was inaugurated later on. The frescoes recovered when Palazzo Vicedomini was demolished are still on show in the headquarters of via Gandhi. These frescoes date back to the second half of the 16th century and are attributed to Giovanni Bianchi. Work in the council housing sector dropped during the second half of the '50's, while there was an increase in demand from the private sector. The cooperative failed to take immediate advantage of the situation: private building was considered to be a speculative sector and the cooperatives refused to work for it. But just ten years later, in 1967, persisting difficulties in the public works sector obliged the Consortium to draw up a plan of action in the private business real estate field, the first intervention of which took place in Chiavari. Still in the second half of the ‘50’s, much of the qualified manpower turned its back on the cooperative world, thus adding to the crisis. The younger workers became jobbers, while the building site managers and foremen established craftsmen’s enterprises and operated on the local market, where they came up against the cooperatives in which they had once worked. The critical situation was overcome once again thanks to new prospects. The Consortium acquired the contract for building a section of the Salerno-Reggio Calabria motorway together with other cooperatives. This job obliged the Consortium to face up to how things were done in the south of Italy and with a very different way of conducting industrial relations. This first experience in the road-building sector was followed by jobs in the Valassina-Milano, Cisa and Adriatica highways. With the advent of the Sixties, the Consortium acquired systems able to support developments in the major works sector. This was when the aggregates industry was enlarged to a further extent. The new brick-works of Quattro Castella was inaugurated in 1962 while the Reni brick-works was acquired in 1964, rebuilt and immediately opened for production. Morini, a plant that produced bituminous road-metal, was acquired in 1965 and a new crushing mill was built in Guardasone di Traversetolo in 1969. Ivano Curti resigned from office in 1965 after 20 years of activity. He was substituted by Livio Spaggiari who had already worked for some years alongside Curti in the management of the Consortium. Training became one of the cornerstones in the development of the movement. After experience with the boarding-school of Rivaltella, which dated back to the Resistance period and focused on mechanics and building, the Consortium purchased the Cocconcelli mansion in via Passo Buole in 1960. This was where the Building School was established in collaboration with the Association of production and labour cooperatives, a school that was the training ground for cooperative personnel. The Consortium supplied its technicians as lecturers and paid the board and lodging costs of the young apprentices from the less affluent cooperatives. The first headmaster was Corrado Canepari. The school functioned as such for about ten years, after which the training activities were taken over by the Ghiardo Centre, which was promoted by both the local institutions and the cooperative movement. | |
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5. 1971 – 1990: Industrialization, major building works, concentration
The production of prefabricated buildings helped some of the member cooperatives to become increasingly more industrialized. Cooperativa Muratori di Castelnuovo Sotto established Cocep (prefabricated industrial constructions) while Cooperativa Braccianti di Cadelbosco Sopra began to produce floor tiles. The Fosdondo brickworks started work on prefabricated elements for residential building and Cooperativa Muratori di Campegine began to produce ceramic and floor slabs. In 1961, Cooperativa Falegnami patented the first prefabricated doors and Cooperativa Cementori also patented its range of products. Promoted by Cooperativa Muratori di Sant’Ilario, which had merged with Cooperativa Edile di Calerno in 1960, Cooperfer entered the furniture and window frame market in 1962.
The actual Consortium joined the major member cooperatives with a view to embarking upon new industrial initiatives. The Coopre cooperatives became a reality. The core-business was always based on construction work but plant locations were dictated by the logistic need for production. The first experience was that of Vecchiano, in the province of Pisa, where dreams turned into reality in the form of a large factory for the production of prefabricated elements. After a few years, it was transferred to the Tuscan cooperative movement through “cooperative friendship” and was finally wound up. In 1975, it was the turn of Metalcopre 3, a metal-working enterprise situated in Gualtieri, which had been salvaged by CCPL for occupational reasons as occurred in Cassina where Cooprecar 4, a company that manufactured bodywork for buses was established in 1974 with the additional support of CCFR. Industrial diversification took place at the same time as a concentration process amongst the cooperatives, something that was particularly rife between '70 and '74. The size of the enterprises changed as did the cultural basis on which their managements were founded: no longer politics, but economy and corporate organization were the issues involved. The monolithic characteristics of the traditional cultural cornerstones crumbled when stable relations were established with the Bocconi University. This increasingly more entrepreneurial connotation also led to the Consortium’s first labour disputes: first in the crushing mills (1967) and then in the brick-works (1969). The Consortium staff-members were no longer cooperative members but employees, even though they were still bound to the organization by political and professional ideals similar to those of the cooperative world. Strikes, times of great tension, also allowed the CCPL executives to underscore the Consortium’s diversity from the associated cooperatives. In 1971, the need to convert the Bibbiano brick-works encouraged the Consortium to think along more industrial lines. Eighty jobs had to be saved, and this could not be done by producing bricks alone. The first idea was to manufacture slabs of asbestos-cement or sheets of polystyrene for building purposes. It was only in 1975 that a decision was made to produce packaging for fresh foods. Success with Coopbox paved the way for the development of other factories: one in Ferrandina (Basilicata) was established in 1982 thanks to loans from Cassa del Mezzogiorno (Development Fund for the South of Italy) followed by another in 1994 in Murcia and yet another in 2001, in Nove Mésto (Slovakia). Coopbox’s foreign factories are the result of CCPL’s desire to expand to the international market. The business activities sited abroad required new skills for analysing the international trends, as well as changes in the financial structure of the group. To adequately respond to the need for market expansion, a decision was made on 22 May 1975 to unify the Consortia of Reggio, Parma and Piacenza. The management facilities of the Consortium would be in Reggio with decentralized headquarters in Parma and Piacenza. Thus the Parma Consortium merged with the Reggio Consortium through incorporation, but the two organizations had already been working jointly for the past couple of years. This operation was part of a strategy of the Emilian production cooperative organization, which divides the entire country into areas of influence: CCPL of Reggio Emilia was assigned Lombardy, Liguria, Piedmont and Basilicata while the Consortia of Bologna and Ravenna were assigned the rest of the country. History was changed a little to suit the need to legitimize the new organization and happened during the fiftieth anniversary celebrations where reference was made to the date (1924) on which the Fascist Consortium, of which CCPL was the juridical continuation, was established. The unification process concluded in 1977. These unification processes were also the expression of a much wider trend which led to the establishment of Conaco (National Consortium of Construction Cooperatives) and the regional Consortia in Veneto, Lombardy and Tuscany. Since 1976, CCPL has built the Administrative Centre in Reggio Emilia, in an area owned by the Consortium and Cooperativa Muratori di Cadelbosco. The headquarters of the Consortium thus moved to the S. Pellegrino Business Centre in via Gandhi. One of the most rational quarters to have been built after the war, it was designed by Cooperativa Architetti e Ingegneri of Reggio Emilia and was built and sold by the cooperatives and Consortium together. At that time, the Consortium was helping the Municipality to implement its town development policy by assisting in the modernization of the town’s road network including the construction of the via Emilia all’Ospizio flyover, which eased the traffic along the north-south axis of the town. In the Eighties, CCPL was one of the major Italian building enterprises and acquired even more importance in this sector when Aldo Piccinini became chairman in May 1982. The Consortium was involved in the reconstruction work in Irpinia following the devastating earthquake that had taken place there. Meanwhile, CCPL had started out on important jobs in Genoa and Milan where the Pratocentenaro Towers were built and also worked on Line 3 of the Milanese underground railway. In 1985, CCPL was involved by IRI in the construction of the Russian pipe manufacturing plant of Volgograd. While these interventions underscored the multi-regional activities of the Consortium, this latter now acquired TeleReggio, the major local television network. Development of the construction business proceeded in years dogged by a serious crisis in the building industry (1983-1986) which created difficulties for many of the Consortium’s member cooperatives. This led to friction between the first and second degree organizations. Most especially, the larger cooperatives no longer felt that they needed to belong to the Consortium. In 1987, the large cooperatives transferred all the business services of the various different territorial consortia (three in Emilia and one each in Sardinia, Lombardy, Tuscany and Veneto) to the CCC “Consortium of Construction Cooperatives” of Bologna. The cooperative Consortium also took over Conaco in 1987 and was recognized by the cooperative movement as the only national Consortium. The Consortium employees who dealt with business services (along with the entire line of business) passed into CCC, with reference to CCPL Costruzioni. Some of the directors of the Consortium became board members of the new organization. In 1988, the Consortium contacted Cast (strategic assistance Centre of the Bocconi University) and asked them to perform a strategic analysis of its economic future. The development plan for the industrial business proposed to CCPL in the cooperative re-organization project was approved and launched. | |
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6. 1991-2011: the industrial Consortium
Chairman Piccinini resigned on 15 May 1991. For a short period of time, he was replaced by Flavio Cagossi (chairman of Cooperativa Costruire), who acted as guarantor for the five major cooperatives: Coopsette, Orion, Unieco, Costruire and Sinco of Parma. The decisions taken during the first six months of 1992 began the process whereby CCPL would be converted into an industrial consortium.The board also assessed whether the Consortium could be split into two independently run companies, one dedicated to the traditional business activities and the other (CCPL Industria) to be developed in the industrial sphere, but the idea was rejected. The Consortium began to dispose of its real estate activities according to market criteria since it was felt that they did not relate to the industrial scope of the Consortium itself. Investments were made to help control the industrial activities in Italy and Spain. Having completed his tasks, Cagossi resigned in 1992 and was substituted by Romano Salsi who acted as chairman until 1997. Representatives from the major cooperatives were nominated as managing directors. Time-honoured expression of the Consortium’s technical organization, the executive Committee comprised the managers from the relative cooperatives. The technical input was reversed and flowed from the Cooperatives towards the Consortium for the very first time. As this conversion process, from service-provider to industrial organization, proceeded, there began to be bad feeling between the large cooperatives and the much smaller ones, some of which only recently established, since they were able to exercise a right of veto on the strategies of the organization. This phase was dominated by the query “to whom does the Consortium belong?” As mentioned before, this led to the proposal to split the Consortium into two enterprises. However, when the crisis that occurred in Italy after the Tangentopoli (Bribesville) events had also been the subject of analysis, the final decision was to keep the Consortium united and to proceed towards its slow conversion. Thanks to Salsi’s work, the membership dropped from 120 to 45 members between the years 1991 and 1993. A second source of disagreement concerned the internal technical organization, where different and conflicting opinions were rife. In 1994, the influence exercised by the major cooperatives increased when two of their executives entered the Consortium. They were Corrado Canepari (who resigned as the chairman of Orion to deal with the general management of the Consortium) and Ivan Soncini from Coopsette. These new entries represented a “cultural revolution” in the relations between the Consortium and its members as these latter, who were well aware of the skills required by the conversion process, acquired an actively decisional role in organizing the corporate governance issues. Strategic decisions concerning corporate development were taken in 1994 and several sectors of interest were chosen: packaging, brick production and aggregates. Following the acquisition of Orion Petroli SpA, the energy sector joined the list in 1996. The Consortium thus re-organized its business activities into strategic areas. That very same year, a modification to the memorandum of association converted CCPL from non-profit organization to second grade cooperative. No longer a consortium, an organization that provided services for the individual needs of its associates, but an enterprise with its own economy and managerial autonomy, one able to draw inspiration from the strategic policies established by its institutional structure. From this viewpoint, the evolution of the members’ role was evident: from members of a consortium to partners of a company, thus with specific expectations as to profit and with an active role in the control of CCPL’s management. 1994 was the year in which Coopbox inaugurated the Spanish plant of Lorca, the third after Bibbiano and Ferrandina in Basilicata. The same thing happened to the aggregate industry, which was developed and merged with Coopre 5 and Parma Inerti. The Consortium’s conversion process had reached a satisfactory stage by 1996-1997: the turnover obtained from the industrial side of the business was more than half the overall turnover, while that obtained from the services-providing sector dropped from 70 to 35% in just a few years. The innovation was development of an industrial plan around which leadership within the Consortium was re-organized. The brick manufacturing industry was in a state of crisis and the window frame sector at a dead loss, but Orion Petroli (energy division) exemplified how management processes of the industrial type could be applied to a business sector. Investments were also made in the subsidiaries: Mecoop was acquired (from Costruire) and re-organized, while Paveblock of Cavriago was taken over from Orion. Disposals were also planned: the small brickyard of Quattro Castella was closed, the PVC window frame factory (Open) was transferred and the brickyard of Sorbolo was made over to Sinco. These changes were not without strife, even though CCPL's overall profitability improved. On the one hand, the business dealings with Orion, Costruire and Sinco were a hark-back to cooperative solidarity traditions, while on the other, they were dictated by aspirations of an economic nature. These were the years when CCPL relaunched the entrepreneurial prospects of the cooperative system. As Ivano Soncini always underscored, the operation was correct from a cooperative cultural aspect and was accomplished by “considering two values: acquire business that was, in any case, of an entrepreneurial nature at a more or less market value […], maintain that business within an albeit second grade cooperative context.” Thus the prospect was to shrewdly proceed towards the creation of an industrial multibusiness. The culmination of this re-organization process coincided with the development of the new corporate governance system, which it still in force. If a formal distinction between owners and management had already been made back in 1994, the board's position at the helm of the enterprise became stronger. Demos Salardi was nominated as chairman in 1997 with Ivan Soncini as managing director, a new office that included both management tasks and, as legal representative, administrative responsibilities as well. It was an unusual sort of organization in the cooperative world as the chairman also acted as director, i.e. he represented the members as well as being management head. The turnover rose from 500 to over 700 billion lira between the years 1997 and 1999, while there were more than 900 employees. The Consortium changed its memorandum of association again in 2001 and became a limited liability company. Separation into divisions, where each specific branch of the business belonged to the parent company, was abandoned in 2002 for a new sort of entrepreneurial structure with CCPL acting as parent company and six business units. This in answer to the need to re-organize the responsibilities and simplify the organization. In seven years, from the time the divisional model was introduced, the overall value had increased from 121 to almost 700 million Euros, while the number of employees had doubled to 1300. Moreover, the subsidiaries were producing more value than the affairs managed by the parent company. The new governance was prompted by a new model of business: the unitary multibusiness cooperative group in which CCPL acted as parent company, controlling and managing the six business units. Each strategic business area became a specific joint-stock company comprising activities within its system according to an industrial and no longer a purely financial logic. In December 2004, the memorandum of association was modified yet again so as to conform to the corporate laws governing commercial enterprises and to pass a new criterion for establishing the capital share of the associated cooperatives. The strategy outlined in the 2002/2004 period was developed to a further extent during the last years of governance as to the composition of the business portfolio and the model of business itself. The simplification and consolidation strategy led to the present-day organization formed by 14 strongly committed member cooperatives involved in the life and development of CCPL. Meanwhile, the business portfolio grew and was rationalized by quitting sectors no longer considered to be of strategic interest for the Group. The most noteworthy innovations in this sphere were important participation in Obiettivo Lavoro and, in September 2009, acquisition of 100% of Gesta. Thanks to CCPL Inerti e Isolanti Italiani, business in the long-standing construction sector became focused on the production of building materials. Now, in 2011, CCPL boasts a model of business that comprises 6 strategic areas (ASA), each of which culminates in a leading company that oversees the pertinent markets through its subsidiaries. Thus, while the previously mentioned CCPL Inerti produces building materials, Gesta pertains to the Facility Management area while Obiettivo Lavoro is a service-provider for enterprises, Coopbox Group belongs to the Food Packaging area, Energy Group to the power production area and Resta to the property and project financing area. | |
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