70 years of Fercam AG: well prepared for the future
Fercam AG, headquartered in Bolzano, South Tyrol, is one of the leading transport and logistics companies in Italy with around 3,350 of its own loading units and more than 1.2 million m² warehouses. The company’s services include international full-load transport by road and rail as well as global sea and air freight transport, national general cargo and numerous logistics services.
Fercam has 93 branches across Europe, 63 of them in Italy, 24 subsidiaries throughout Europe and another six in Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco, Serbia and Albania. Since the beginning of this year, the company has also three facilities in the Far East, Hong Kong, China and Japan. In collaboration with strong partner companies in many countries, Fercam offers reliable transport and logistics services worldwide. Today the company has 2,100 employees and nearly 4,000 external employees, all contributing to sales of EUR 811 million in 2018.
The history of the Fercam began on July 12, 1949, when three shareholders, Bruno Perina, Luigi Spagnolli e Ottorino Fanini, signed the founding of the company in Bolzano with a share capital of one million lire (about EUR 516). In 1963, the company, then with a fleet of five trucks, was acquired by Eduard Baumgartner.
Thomas Baumgartner took over the company from his father in 1981 when Fercam was still operating full truckloads, mainly on Italy-Germany routes. In the almost 40 years of his career, he developed Fercam into a comprehensive logistics company, which today is one of the market leaders in Italy and is also strongly represented in Europe as a competent logistics partner.
Since then, Fercam has developed into a recognised logistics service provider in all areas, from road to rail, air and sea freight to distribution logistics, as well as relocations and exhibition and exhibition logistics under the Gondrand brand by Fercam. “I’m sure that technological innovation, especially in our sector, will play an increasingly important role in the future,” anticipates Hannes Baumgartner, who has headed the company as the third-generation managing director since 2017.
The original business purpose of the 1949 founding act – “Domestic and International Carriage of Goods” – reflected an ordinary transport company, but the innovative business idea was to bridge the gap between rail and road transport. Freight cars were loaded in a kind of “piggyback” procedure on special road vehicles, which were then transported by articulated lorries on the road to the recipient.
Although the rolling load was suitable only for short distances, but brought significant time and cost savings, because the costly goods transfer from freight cars to trucks for the distance from the freight yard to the customer was eleminated. For Bolzano, this transport solution was particularly interesting, as it opened up fast and cheap access to rail freight traffic for the large fruit cooperatives on the outskirts and the companies in the industrial zone, which did not have their own rail siding.
Hence the name of the company, combining the first letters of ferrovie (railway) and camion (italian for trucks).
