The new General Manager Michele Riva will guide the Company to new markets and beyond…
We are now inside the very beautiful PROXAUT factory in Castelfranco Emilia (Modena), a leading company that since 1996 has been designing, building and selling Automated Guided Vehicles all over the world, which acronym is AGV.
General Manager at PROXAUT
Before revealing the latest news, we ask Mr. Michele Riva, General Manager of PROXAUT, to describe what AGVs are, how they are developed and what lies behind a successful project.
“Here we are. Welcome to PROXAUT!”, Michele welcomes us “a place of automation and innovation… Well, in simple words, an AGV is an automated guided vehicle, a sort of forklift without operator.
In short, it is a hard worker and collaborator that can work indoor and outdoor, in a warehouse or in a production. It is always running and effective, even if it has to work in hostile places such as cold rooms (at around -20° C) or in environments with dense dust, for example in metallurgical, iron and steel industries.
To give you a reply, a project by PROXAUT always comes from the co-operation of colleagues working to find the most suitable solutions for the customer in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, costs and time. When a customer approaches us asking what we do, we answer asking what they need exactly and that’s where we start working from.
Depending on the application, we will decide to produce a lifter with forks, with clamps, bilateral, trilateral or a shuttle (a mobile loading platform). We will decide about laser guidance, inertial or hybrid according to client’s needs… We are truly a tailor-made manufacturer!”.
At this point we ask Michele to tell us about the latest developments: “Dear Michele, fantastic these AGVs, you build great allies for your customers! But tell us more about your company…”.
“We are at an epochal turning point. As you may know, PROXAUT since July 2022 is part of Middleby Corporation, an American listed group (NASDAQ: MIDD) with over 120 companies, employing over 10,000 people worldwide. Over the past two years, Mr. Stefano Ballotti has gradually left the helm of the company and as of July 2024, the new General Manager is officially in charge…”.
Michele explains smiling: “Middleby thought I was the right person to lead Proxaut. It’s really a challenge but I think I have a great enthusiasm to drive the company forward. Needless to say, there are a number of people on my side whom I trust and I can count on, I will not be alone. In the near future we will focus strongly on new navigation systems, highly customised AGVs, on improving our service and maintenance in order to be always close to our customers’.
Michele accompanies us for a short visit to production, where a very important shipment is being prepared. It consists in a fleet of 17 AGVs that will leave for the United States for the meat processing industry, totally in stainless steel precisely to fulfil the needs of the food sector as well. After saying goodbye, we again offer our sincere congratulations to Michele and also, we say goodbye to Mr. Stefano Ballotti with a handshake. It has been great working together over the years.
“KEEP GOING”
www.middleby.com
