Leading the European Steel Industry: Manni Sipre’s Legacy of Innovation and Sustainability

Manni Sipre: Men of steel

Forming a vital part of Manni Group, Manni Sipre has established itself as the European forerunner in pre-fabricated beams, steel sheets, tubes and section bars

Ever since Luigi Manni took the decision to found his own company trading in products in 1945, the Manni family has been linked with steel. Over the course of three generations, Luigi, Giuseppe and Francesco Manni have guided the Verona-based Manni Group to the point that today it leads the market in steel products (Manni Sipre and Manni Inox), insulated metal panels (Isopan), renewable energy and energy efficiency (Manni Energy).

Comprising of 12 operating companies, and incorporating 21 production, service and distribution centres around the world, Manni Group’s 1000 employees combine to serve a global client base of more than 10,000, and in 2016 contributed to a group-wide revenue of 520 million euros.

A number of key subsidiaries allow Manni Group to be present across both its domestic and the international market. These include Manni Sipre, the Italian market leader in the field of pre-processed structural steel elements, and Icom Engineering,which specialises in delivering technical assistance and managing the supply of steel constructions. “Today, Manni Sipre is the largest service centre in Europe for steel structural elements that are used both in Italy and across a wide range of global projects,” explains Export Business Development Manager, Lino Matteo Tosoni. “We specialise in the buying and selling of both off-the-shelf and pre-manufactured finished steel structural elements for key customers such as steel contractors, general contractors, and oil and gas plant builders.”

For over 50 years, Manni Sipre has offered customers the benefit sprovided by the most advanced technologies used in its Service Centres, which significantly increase the competitiveness of steel solutions. These centres offer standard European and special beams, pre-processed beams (e.g. cut and drilling to drawing), built up sections, hybrid sections, equal and unequal angles, Burback rails, joint and reinforcement plates, steel sheets, structural tubes,merchant bars and stainless steel. They also provide the facilities necessary to perform a number of important production tasks, including cold or thermal cutting to drawing, drilling, marking, robotic flame cutting, robotic plate welding, mechanical bevelling, painting and hot galvanising.

Customer service

In 2016, the six Manni Sipre Italian production plants processed and distributed approximately 260,000 tonnes of steel. “This volume is achieved through a combination of buy/sell products and product that is supplied with a higher value for our customers, which includes any pre-machining requested,” notes Francesco Manni, President of Manni Sipre. “By undertaking our work in this way, we focus on our core activities of supplying a finished or semi-finished product, and our customers can focus on great final project execution. This innovative, service-centre approach reduces customers’ costs and increases their competitiveness.

“Our main activity is product manufacturing, and our aimis to supply to the steel shop and/or oil and gas player steel products manufactured as per their drawings. Our intention since the very first day of operations has been to be a partner to those companies doing business in the steel building industry, and in new or emerging sectors,” Francesco continues. “By delivering steel products and elements of the highest possible quality, at the fastest timescales, and to the exact specifications to meet our customers’ needs, we establish this ‘partnership’ which allows them to focus on their core activities, while we help to handle the whole steel construction sequence. This means that the customer benefits from the significant cost savings that arise from the ability to simplify project management, outsource low production works and reduce project lead times.”

An important extension to Manni Sipre’s customer service offering can be found in the activities of Icom Engineering, an engineering and construction company established by Manni Group to guide and manage its customers through the metal construction process in the best way possible. By being able to manage the production of finished, ready-to-be-assembled steel structures, Manni Sipre has effectively integrated both the steel engineering and production processes in order to promote the best choices available to those customers wishing to optimise the timing, and the qualitative and economic aspects of projects.

“Over the years, we have built up a considerable reference list of projects that span across a number of different industry sectors,” Francesco states. “Projects that we have helped to realise include power stations and lattice transmission towers, civil and industrial buildings, turn-key factories and plants for metal building systems, water dams, and petroleum and chemical processing plants. In the case of the latter, we have been supplying steel structures to the oil and gas sector since the 1980s, and in that time we have serviced many of the leading players including, Esso, Gazprom, SAIPEM, ENI, Tecnimont, RENCO and Kuwait Oil Company.”

Sustainability

The aforementioned list of projects, and oil and gas customers also provides a perfect example of the geographic reach that Manni Sipre has been able to cultivate. While the majority of its customers’ projects are based in Europe and North Africa, given the latter’s proximity to Italy, it has been involved in several major, ground breaking undertakings further afield.

One such example would be the company’s contribution to the expansion of the Panama Canal. Through its Finished Structural Element (FSE) Division, which was created to satisfy market demand to reduce the cost of steel constructions, Manni Sipre has supplied a total of 2200 tonnes of steel to one of the project’s contractors, ICM, which will be utilised within various crushing plants. Elsewhere, steel from Manni Sipre has also been used in vital infrastructure projects like water dams in Iraq and Ethiopia, as well as a series of major gas turbine installations in Egypt.

Wherever its steel products may eventually find themselves, each is subject to a full traceability process, providing both the company and the customer peace of mind as to where a particular item originated from and how it was manufactured. The level of responsibility and sustainability also extends to recording what becomes of the wastage and scrappage of each steel product.

“Sustainability is a massively important theme for Manni Group and one which it sees as being a key driver of growth for the future,” Francesco says. “For our part, we have an Energy Manager in place at each of our plants, whose role is to ensure that we are doing all we can to reduce energy consumption and costs, and make ourselves a greener business. Our Energy Managers help to oversee the energetic auditing of our plants on a yearly basis, the results of which inspire the sustainable actions we then put into effect. Examples of these actions include the installing of solar panels on all of our buildings, efforts to reduce noise and light pollution, and improve air quality. As a result of our work, in 2016, for each tonne of steel sold, Manni Sipre alone released 37 per cent less CO2 compared to the average value of the period from 2010 to 2012.”

Nurturing talent

Equally as vital to the group’s long-term future is the next generation of employees and the innovative ideas these young minds can bring to the business. As a way of nurturing these ideas and this talent, Manni Group created Manni Young Generation (MYG), a group-wide academy with the aim of investing in those under the age of 30 and using their ideas to shape its growth in the years to come. Meeting on a monthly basis, MYG is seen as a place for integration, training and the development of potential, where ideas are exchanged. It is the hope of Manni Group that as the MYG team grows it will be responsible for accelerating the innovation, synergy and change within the group so as to increase value for all its stakeholders.

Returning to Manni Sipre, Francesco is enthusiastic about the fact that revenue has been growing steadily for the last several years and that this pattern has placed the business is a financially strong position, which gives it the freedom to embark on its growth plans for 2018 and beyond. “In 2018, part of our focus will be on entering into more new markets with our finished products, including those in Europe, Africa and the United States,” reveals Lino. “In terms of industry sectors, meanwhile, the oil and gas market will be of increasing importance as we look to further advertise our ability to deliver our steel structures to complex projects including the above mentioned oil and gas plants and power stations.”

As Lino concludes, it will be the company’s job to spread the word of its core capabilities and strengths in order to secure the projects it hopes to: “Our technical ability to solve problems and meet customer specific needs at an affordable price is what has helped set Manni Sipre apart from its competitors, and this is what needs to remain our focus as we move into 2018. Our track record of utilising our added value proposition to help create a big increase in financial value for our customers is well documented, and we look forward to transferring this to many new, exciting projects in the future.”

Manni Sipre
Services: Steel structural pre-fabricated elements