Alliances and partnerships between companies help boost production capacity and system efficiency, extend the commercial offering, enrich the expertise of individual enterprises, and help provide better coverage for industry markets. These are some of the arguments made at the Assocomaplast seminar held at Gefran’s premises on 3 November 2015, to illustrate possible contractual forms, from network contracts to European Economic Interest Grouping (EEIG).

During the event, which attracted the participation of all association heads and about fifty companies, the alliance experience between Moss and Omso was presented, and Giorgio Del Mare (ProperDelMare Consulting) illustrated the most important relational and organisational aspects to be taken into consideration when undertaking the path to a partnership.

After an initial round of thanks, a brief discussion introduced the afternoon's talks. The chairman of Assocomaplast, Alessandro Grassi said: "The reason why we decided to organise this type of event is to provide a forum for discussion, and share professional and entrepreneurial information and entrepreneurship among members within the association. Today, in fact, I met people who I had never had the opportunity of meeting before, despite having been a part of the association for over a decade, even at a Council level. And this is intended to be an incentive for companies to participate in more than one association because, to provide useful services to their members, Assocomaplast itself also needs ideas and suggestions.

The common thread of this first meeting is the opportunity to collaborate and create synergy among members, networking even between competitor companies and, why not, integrating companies within the various groups set up within Assocomaplast. For this reason, we have invited two members, Moss and Omso, to talk about their significant experience in developing the network agreement called IDEA (Italian Decorating Equipment Alliance).”

"These are technically positive economic times," Grassi continued. “Even today, at Assocomaplast, we have seen that data suggests the year 2015 is closing in a particularly positive manner: 80% of the sector is showing growth compared to the previous year, reaching in some cases two-digit increase peaks.

This is an important moment, partly because, from an international standpoint, Expo has given Italy excellent visibility, providing the opportunity to let us show who we are: Italian companies are strong, they are competitive, they are extremely ‘elastic’ and possess ‘plus points’ that our major competitors are often not able to match. I would like to conclude by inviting Italian companies to take the opportunities that have derived from Expo 2015 - but also from the Volkswagen emissions scandal - to demonstrate that Italian goods and Italian entrepreneurship is most definitely not secondary in technical terms, nor from an intellectual and fair play standpoint".