The original factory, Falco, was established in Pomposa because of the availability of poplar in that area, on the western coast of the Gulf of Venice, in the 1960s. Today, the Trombini Group has five factories and 420 direct employees. Expansion began in 1973 when the company Rafal was established with the idea of replacing wood veneering and plastic facing with the new process developed in the 1970s - melamine facing. That turned out to be a far-sighted move and in the ensuing years, the group has invested heavily in Rafal, keeping up with the advancing technology, and now offering melamine faced board in thicknesses from 8 to 40mm.  A laminates division has also been established there to complete the range of products offered to customers of the Trombini Group. Continuous high pressure post-formable laminates (CPL) are produced here on two of the latest Hymmen press lines and laminates from 0.1mm to 1.2mm thick, in widths of 62 to 186 or 212cm wide. The decor ranges available are matched to those in the rest of the companies in the group. In 1998, Trombini bought the Annovati company. This was Italy's oldest-established particleboard making company, having started in the wood business in 1910. "This acquisition and a small factory making edgings for particleboard which we started up in 2003, called Raf, makes up our current total of five factories in Italy, with the two Annovati factories in the Torino region and the edgings factory, added to Falco and Rafal," said Mr Trombini. In 2002, the Falco factory was totally reincarnated with the installation of a new Siempelkamp ContiRoll press line and a three-daylight Pagnoni press line for melamine facing. The ContiRoll line, a turnkey contract for Siempelkamp, was installed in a new factory building at the Pomposa site, while the old production line building was converted to warehousing. At the same time, Trombini carried out a complete revamp of the Annovati factory, investing in new drying, chip cleaning and screening and other areas of the factory. Total investment at that time was EUR60m, which also included investments in Rafal, which received two paper impregnation lines (one from Vits of Germany and one from Tocchio of Italy) to treat paper to feed the two Hymmen CPL press lines. Eighty percent of the group's particleboard production is melamine faced in the company's own factories on a total of seven press lines. There are three such lines at Annovati (single-opening), one at Falco (three-opening) and three in Rafal (all single-opening). "We are now the third biggest particleboard producer after Saviola and Frati and very close to Frati in production of both raw board and melamine faced panels," said Mr Trombini. The total output of 750,000m³ of raw board comes from the ContiRoll at Falco (designed capacity 1,600m³/day), another ContiRoll at Annovati (1,000 to 1,050m³/day), installed in 1992, and a Dieffenbacher single-opening press line in Falco (300m³/day). The ContiRoll at Annovati was in fact the first ContiRoll to be installed in Italy, said Mr Trombini. Although all the production facilities come under the Trombini Group umbrella, each trades under its own well-established name: Falco, Annovati, Rafal and Raf. In fact the merging of the companies under the Gruppo Trombini Spa name only came about at the end of December 2005. So the names are now departments rather than companies. Wood raw material is always an issue in this wood-starved country and Trombini currently uses around 80% recycled wood and 20% fresh wood. "The country still needs 1.2 to 1.3 million tonnes of wood on top of the total Italian availability to supply the mills of Trombini, Fantoni, Saviola, Frati and Saib, therefore this wood has to be imported," said Mr Trombini. "One of the main parts of the investment in our new line was to increase our ability to utilise recycled wood. Before we had the ContiRoll, we had four single-opening lines which were designed only to use fresh wood. "We are currently looking at a new system to clean recycled wood and are talking to Pal, Instalmec and others because the quality of our wood supply is getting worse and worse." Falco's wood processing capacity has already been doubled when the new continuous press was installed, with Pal supplying the screening and cleaning equipment and Instalmec the suction and drying system, while Trasmec was responsible for the screw and chain conveying lines and the bunkers. Hammel of Germany supplied the primary shredders and Gauss Magneti of Italy the magnetic separator. Secondary chippers for recycled wood came from Ferrari Trituratore of Italy and for green wood from Bruks Klöckner of Germany. The Trombini group's main customer base is in Italy, although it has been selling some raw particleboard to far eastern markets. Normally, the split is about 85/15 domestic to export. "We pay great attention to research and development of colours and invest in human resources and research," said Mr Trombini. "We use both plain and patterned papers and keep very close to our customers and the paper suppliers/printers. Our melamine edging is matched carefully to the face colours and patterns at Raf in Pesaro and supplied to the customer for him to apply to the boards." Trombini used to attend a number of furniture fairs but found that they were an expensive and not very effective way of promoting its products. "Now every year we hold two customer conventions in various locations to show our new colours and designs, combined with a social programme visiting sites of interest, concerts and even go-karting on one occasion," said Mr Trombini. Gruppo Trombini is certainly one of the strong survivors in the Italian particleboard industry, which has seen many names disappear over the years, and its investment in new technology seems to have paid off.