DIEFFENBACHER Acquires Pagnoni

German machine and plant manufacturer DIEFFENBACHER acquired the Italian family-owned company Pagnoni Impianti S.r.l. The company will operate under the new name Pagnoni DIEFFENBACHER S.r.l. effective October 7, 2024.

The acquisition includes the assets and expertise of the plant manufacturer and the four-person team led by Managing Director Michele Pagnoni, the sixth generation of his family to run the long-established company, headquartered in Aicurzio, about 30 km northeast of Milan.

Pagnoni Impianti was founded in 1848 by brothers Stefano and Martino Pagnoni as a manufacturer of oil presses and pasta-shaping machines and systems. After World War I, Nicola Pagnoni, grandson of one of the company’s founders, began producing hot-plate presses, particularly for plywood production. Since then, Pagnoni has specialized in producing single- and multi-opening presses and press lines for the production of particleboard, plywood, MDF and hardboard, as well as HPL decorative laminates and short-cycle lines for melamine and phenolic paper coating.

“Pagnoni fits in perfectly with our values at DIEFFENBACHER. The company is highly regarded in the industry for its partnership-based approach to doing business and its technically sound and well-engineered machines and systems,” says DIEFFENBACHER CFO Lukas Langer. “One of Pagnoni’s great strengths is its ability to develop and implement customized solutions that are profitable for customers. In Michele Pagnoni, we’ve also gained a proven expert well-known for his extensive technical knowledge and competent technical support,” he adds.

With the acquisition of the company, DIEFFENBACHER will focus on existing Pagnoni customers as a first step. “The personal support provided by the familiar Pagnoni contacts will continue. The Pagnoni team will also be supported by our entire global DIEFFENBACHER service network, which will also be available as a point of contact,” explains Ralf Schmidt, Head of Global Lifetime Service Wood & Recycling at DIEFFENBACHER.

In practice, this means that Pagnoni customers in Southeast Asia, for example, can choose whether they want to approach their existing contacts at Pagnoni DIEFFENBACHER in Italy directly or contact the DIEFFENBACHER Asia Pacific team in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The global DIEFFENBACHER production network is available immediately to Pagnoni DIEFFENBACHER. “This means that, for example, DIEFFENBACHER North America in Canada can manufacture spare parts for Pagnoni customers in South America and deliver them quickly,” says Schmidt.

DIEFFENBACHER will use its after-sales expertise to maintain and strengthen the support of existing business relationships for service, spare parts supply and modernizations. “Since the customer base of Pagnoni and DIEFFENBACHER overlap largely, this will produce considerable synergy potential on both sides. Our joint customers will benefit from Pagnoni and DIEFFENBACHER being able to offer everything from a single source,” Schmidt explains.

In the medium to long term, DIEFFENBACHER will add Pagnoni products to its portfolio. “In particular, the short-cycle, HPL and plywood plants will be a useful addition to our range of services. We will also incorporate know-how in single and multi-opening plants for producing wood-based panels into our product range,” says Stefan Zipf, Head of the Wood Business Unit at DIEFFENBACHER. “There are also synergies with our Forming Business Unit in special presses, for example, for transformer boards,” he adds.

“The acquisition of Pagnoni represents a further logical and sensible addition to our range of services, with which we are positioning ourselves even more broadly for the future,” says Langer. “We warmly welcome Michele Pagnoni and his team to the DIEFFENBACHER Group and look forward to a great working relationship.”