Facchinetti, a 50-year story
This year the company from Novara celebrates its 50th year in business. It is an important milestone: a story of entrepreneurship, people and family values cultivated year after year.
The origins
The story begins in Novara in 1975, when Teresiano Facchinetti founded Officine Facchinetti. By combining artisanal steelworking with personal inventiveness, he soon became a reference point for the local dairy industry, especially the world of Gorgonzola.
He developed automatic piercing machines capable of processing 200 wheels per hour, followed by first wire-cut and then rotary portioning machines. As technology advanced, the workshop expanded too, offering complete solutions for Gorgonzola production: from ultrasonic blade portioning machines that load cheese directly into trays ready for heat sealing, to automatic machines for wrapping eighths and sixteenths in aluminium foil from a reel.
Growth and specialisation
Over the years, the company grew beyond Gorgonzola and beyond Novara, specialising in Crescenza cutting and other soft cheeses such as Taleggio, and later in the cutting of hard cheeses, from Montasio to Sardinian and Sicilian Pecorino.
In the mid-1990s, Teresiano’s daughter Silvia joined him, bringing entrepreneurial energy and commercial expertise that helped the company expand. Its international reach became stronger and stronger. Facchinetti machines reached five continents through a widespread network of agents and distributors, processing products such as feta loaves, Grana-type cheeses, pizza cheese, Cheddar, Gouda and Edam.
From artisan workshop to industrial plant
In 2015, Facchinetti expanded again. The modernisation of research and production departments and the arrival of two new partners, one with technical and management expertise and the other with financial and commercial skills, marked the transformation into a modern industrial plant.
With branches in Germany and France, a historic office in Russia and established partners in the United States, Facchinetti srl now produces more than 100 machines a year, serving over 30 countries worldwide.
The catalogue includes machinery for:
- Automatic salting
- Brushing and washing in automatic tunnels
- Piercing blue cheeses
- Injecting creams into aged Pecorino cheeses
- Fixed-weight portioning, both semi-automatic and automatic
Three new highly automated lines
Among the latest-generation automatic lines, three systems built in 2024 show the level of technology the company has reached:
- Export-type blue cheese portioning with tray discharge: 30 packs/minute
- Hard cheese cutting with interlaced inline output for flowpack packaging: 60 pieces/minute
- Euroblock cutting into 150 g portions: 100 portions/minute with checkweigher
Specialised fixed-weight portioning lines
Facchinetti focuses its research on solutions for precise, automated cutting of round and block cheeses.
LPR06
- Loading gantry with pallet handling
- Electronic slabbing for Grana Padano
- Automatic removal of top and bottom plates
- Coring and portioning
- 60 pieces/minute with waste below 3%
LPR08
- Fixed-weight cutting of round wheels
- Sequential belt discharge
- 60 pieces/minute
- Optional 3D scanning
- Split-blade version to reduce trim waste
TXF06
- 3D scanning of the cheese profile
- Optimised holding systems for feta, pizza cheese, Provolone and similar products
- Ultrasonic cutting
- Output belt control for portion overlap of 2-3 mm
- 98% yield
Looking ahead
Facchinetti closely follows technological development, convinced that it can give partners the tools they need to improve work effectiveness and increase productivity.
Every day brings an innovation to adopt, an idea to listen to, and a new challenge to face. That is why the company continues to develop custom machinery through a design method refined over 50 years of experience alongside dairy producers all over the world.
