“Mr. Francesco Pieropan”
CEO of Italian furnace builder “Meapforni“
Today we speak with “Mr. Francesco Pieropan”, CEO of Italian furnace builder “Meapforni“.
We are indeed fortunate today to have an interview with an individual who we have known for a number of years and one whom we have a very high opinion of, Mr. Francesco Pieropan, of furnace builder “Meapforni” of Italy. Francesco, I appreciate the time, lets start off with your personal background, in particular how you ended up in the heat treatment industry.
“After my university studies I met a family friend who introduced me to the world of furnace producers, this was 1984, and at the time I worked for a company called “Elsima”, which produced mainly mesh belt furnaces for brazing and sintering. My first goal was to expand the market and it was a pleasure for me to start travelling to countries such as France, Spain, USA and Canada.
Earlier this year I was able to visit your facility, the original article can be found at “Furnace Builder “Thrives” Over the Past 8 Years”, however perhaps you could in your own words tell us the history of the company?
“After many years with other larger furnace builders, some colleagues and myself, decided to group together and transform our experience in a new challenge- “Meapforni” was the result.”
What is your position with the company-I believe you have partial ownership of the company.
“Yes that is correct, I have shares of Meapforni and my position is CEO”.
My impression of “Meapforni” is that you can offer many different furnace designs, more than the average furnace builder it would appear. This is a rather “round about” way of asking what types of furnaces have you built over the years?
“When we started we decided to concentrate on the products and applications we were very familiar with and had a great deal of expertise in so we could deliver a high quality product. This is why we started with automated batch and mesh belt lines for fasteners. At the same time we were receiving requests from our customers for different applications which means we have built and delivered vacuum furnaces, nitriders , rotating and roller furnaces.”
Do you have standard product offerings, or would you consider yourself more of a “custom” design firm?
“Definitely we are a custom producer although we try to use standard assemblies and sub assemblies, but our strength is the capacity to deliver a highly tailor-made product.”
You are based in Italy but is that your largest market? Historically where have the majority of your furnaces shipped to and do you see this shifting in the short or medium term? For instance, do you see North America becoming a larger market for you?
“Yes we are based not far from Venice in the northeast part of Italy. The Italian market is not our largest, we work mainly abroad, and Europe and Switzerland are our main markets. We are concentrating on becoming more global, and for this reason we are working a lot to find agreements and alliances. North America is for sure a very important market for us and we hope to have more possibilities to start there also”
Are there any new technologies you are looking at that you have not offered before?
“For the moment we are too busy with our existing products, our focus now is to expand our applications to various fields, for example medical, aerospace and defence.”
Earlier this year you mentioned you that you had received some very interesting orders, one in particular which involved salt quenching I know you were very proud of. Are you able to share any details about this project now? Are there any other “intriguing” projects which you can tell us about?
“Yes we recently delivered a fully automatic mesh belt line to a European leader when it comes to producing garden appliances and products. The line was built using the latest concepts of carbon reduction technologies, has a capacity of 1 ton per hour, and was designed from scratch to fit into an existing area. We are also working on some new projects where argon is the atmosphere but at the moment we cannot say more”
The heat treat industry is seeing challenges these days but this is hardly unusual. In North America the number one issue is a shortage of good, experienced people. Is this an issue in Europe or are you facing other “problems”?
“Meapforni is facing the same scenario, although we are lucky because we are in an area where there are a lot of small and medium companies very skilled in what we produce who can help us as required. At the same time our company is working to add young, talented people that will help our existing staff.”
North Americans look at energy costs in Europe with absolute shock, how do these high energy prices effect furnace design and what solutions is “Meapforni” offering?
“You are right, Europe, especially during and after the Covid period, has faced an incredible increase of costs not only regarding gas and electrical supply for furnace heating but also for all technical gases used for heat treatment. This is why a lot of “old furnaces” are no longer competitive and have been scrapped. We have worked a lot on insulating materials quality and the way they are applied along with software modes to optimize the use of the furnace heating during every moment of production and non production time.”
Francesco how do you see 2026 shaping up for your company in particular and the heat treatment industry in general?
“Europe has faced an important deceleration over the last couple of years for reasons which are known around the world. Our company is trying to work on special niche markets and offering super personalized solutions, this we believe will help us to face a very good 2026 which is to say we are excited about the future.”
Alessandro Lorusso (COO and Shareholder), Sonia Pellizzon (CFO and shareholder), Francesco Pieropan