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Italcementi - Cementificio Pesenti

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1920 - Overview

Besides being a precious industrial monument, this cement plant can be considered the home of the modern cement industry of Italy. Opened in 1878 by Pesenti Brothers, it assumed the present look in 1906, when the Pesenti's Company merged with the second one by importance, the Piccinelli's. This fusion paved the road to the birth of Italcementi, the first national cement company and one of the biggest in Europe still today. The enlargement process was realized between 1906 and 1927, by taking over smaller cement factories in the northern and central Italy and building new ones. The factory of Alzano was radically modernized after 1906: it was equipped with six Vulcano-type vertical ovens and an ingenious system of elevated rails to move raw materials inside the plant. Between the two world wars it employed 400 workers and producing Portland, white Portland, hydraulic lime and slowly strength cement. Total production capacity at the end of 1939 was 60 tons, but during the Second World War the plant had to be turned off, because of its few capacity not useful in necessary short times. This choice concerned only "old-type" factories of Italcementi (Alzano Lombardo and Ozzano Monferrato), with a positive result: these units weren't destroyed during the war, because of their "not strategic importance". Then, we still can see them nowdays as rare examples of "old-type" plants, in front of many modern ones, with rotary kilns. However, this situation signed the future of these factories. From the 50s, Italcementi began a reorganization program which aimed to the closure of old obsolete units, in front of the opening of new high-capacity ones. In fact, just in 1951 Alzano factory employed only 140 workers and Portland production was suspended; it produced only "high refined" cement and super hydraulic lime, as niche fine manufacture. This slowly importance loss led to the definitive closure in 1974.

Today the factory seems to be immune to the flowing time, but this has not to avoid a right and proper recovery, as one of the most beautiful Italian industrial monuments.