STEEL DOESN'T LIE, AND NEITHER DO WE.
We've spent so much time with steel that we've come to resemble it. And we made it our manifesto.
1 / RESISTANCE
Steel withstands loads other materials couldn't bear. Nearly sixty years in business, three generations, market changes, the crises that have reshaped Italian manufacturing: and yet, here we still are. Because a certain stubbornness in doing things right — the one Beppe built into this company's DNA — doesn't get lost along the way.
2 / TRASPARENCY
Steel is what it appears to be. You can measure it, test it, certify it. It has no grey areas, it doesn't disguise itself. The same goes for our work. No hidden costs, no promises we can't keep. What we say is what we do.
3 / PRECISION
Steel doesn't allow for approximation.
One millimeter off means starting the piece over.
Attention to detail is the starting point, and the finish line, of every job.
4 / DURABILITY
Steel withstands time, wear, external agents. It doesn't deteriorate, it doesn't give way. Nearly sixty years in business are proof that our way of working holds up over time. Just like our relationships with clients: many have been with us for decades. And they keep choosing us.
5 / DUCTILITY
Steel is hard, but it can be shaped. It changes form without losing its nature. Prototypes, small batches, urgent jobs, non-standard work: we don't back away. Difficult jobs don't scare us, often they're the ones we handle best. Flexible in our solutions, solid in our results.
Le origini
Beppe Bordoni, all’anagrafe Bonfiglio, impara il mestiere osservando le mani degli altri. Figlio di un falegname, entra giovanissimo, a soli 12 anni, nella bottega di Silvio Camurri — che diventerà suo suocero — e lì, tra ferro e officina, trascorre più di venticinque anni. Impara facendo e sbagliando. Nel 1960 sposa Mafalda e dalla loro unione nascondo Paola, Silvio e Francesca.
Nel 1967 Beppe decide di mettersi in proprio. Sono anni in cui ci si lancia senza paracadute, con una famiglia da mantenere e un mestiere da reinventare. Nel 1968 nasce la Bordoni Bonfiglio, specializzata in carpenteria metallica, un settore allora poco esplorato, ma ricco di possibilità per chi sa interpretare i tempi e il proprio territorio.
Origins
Beppe Bordoni, registered at birth as Bonfiglio, learns the trade by watching other people's hands. Son of a carpenter, he enters, at just 12 years old, the workshop of Silvio Camurri — who would later become his father-in-law — and there, among iron and machinery, spends more than twenty-five years. He learns by doing, and by making mistakes. In 1960 he marries Mafalda, and their union gives rise to Paola, Silvio, and Francesca.
In 1967 Beppe decides to go out on his own. These are years when you leap without a safety net, with a family to support and a trade to reinvent. In 1968 Bordoni Bonfiglio is founded, specializing in metal fabrication, a field little explored at the time, but full of possibility for those able to read the moment and their own territory.
The territory
Rolo is a small town on the border between Emilia and Lombardy, between Reggio, Modena, and Mantua. It's the kind of place that doesn't fully belong to anyone, and perhaps that's exactly why it develops an intelligence of its own: the intelligence of those who must reckon with different cultures, different traditions, different ways of understanding work.
Since the eighteenth century, Rolo's workshops have established themselves as a point of reference in wood inlay craftsmanship. By the early twentieth century, Rolo was producing six to seven thousand tables a year. A tradition and an art that is, above all, a way of looking at material: respecting it, making the most of it, turning it into something that lasts.
It's in this that Bordoni Bonfiglio takes root and bears its fruit.
Certificato di qualità
The method
Beppe spends his entire life in the workshop. When he hammers iron, he sings. Set to the notes of the Barber of Seville, the material is forged and bent. Precision becomes a posture, a self-imposed discipline. The product, certainly, speaks to the skill and expertise of the person who makes it — but even more, to their dedication.
What Beppe defines, first and foremost through his own example, is an attitude, a way of being in one's work, marked by a stubborn determination to find solutions where others see only problems. Until the right path is found, trying and trying again is the right path.
New generation
The workshop is, at the same time, a playground for his children, who spend their childhood among the workbenches, counting pieces. They recognize the sound of iron, its texture, its temperature, they play with the shavings. They create swords and trinkets.
It's a world of make-believe, where an idea is allowed to take shape.
Within a few years, the playground becomes a workplace. Today the company is led by Paola, Silvio, and Francesca, and the third generation is already stepping up, with Federico, Andrea, and Tommaso. Continuity goes beyond the family name: what guides them is the same honesty, the same generosity in their work, the same unshakeable conviction that doing things well is the only way to do them.
ln 2002, the introduction of laser cutting marks a turning point: speed changes, care doesn't. That same year, the partnership with SSAB - a Swedish company leading the production of high-strength steels, and today one of the pillars of Bordoni Bonfiglio's work - begins. Working their steels across thicknesses ranging from 0.8 to 20 mm means dealing with materials that don't forgive imprecision.
Recognition
The partnership with SSAB, begun with the introduction of laser cutting, opens the doors to international markets. In 2009 Bordoni Bonfiglio reaches the final of the Swedish Steel Prize — the only Italian company to do so after Fiat — thanks to the design of the Albatros agricultural sprayer, developed together with Andreoli Engineering: less weight, lower costs, more intelligence applied to the material. A recognition that comes about, as often happens in Emilia, through collaboration between neighboring businesses and the ability to work as a system, putting everyone's talents to good use.
The Bordoni team
A company's name tells only part of the story. The other part is written by the people who, over the years, have inhabited these spaces, cutting, bending, working the steel. A company's second family — the one not chosen by blood, but by mutual trust — grows over time. It solidifies, it blends together. Everyone brings a part of themselves: a qualification, a talent, an insight. A seasoned team lasts as long as a well-welded joint.
