Eng. Luca Zappelli

Eng. Luca Zappelli

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF AIR

The history of SULPOL seems to unfold in a constant dualism, a relationship of facts and events in a game of mutual complementarity and opposition.

This dualism also seems to be the essence of the company’s main product, polystyrene, so voluminous and bulky yet equally light, insulating and resistant, despite being composed almost entirely of air alone.

A dualism that tells of a fall and a rebirth, of the province and the metropolis, of the synergistic relationship between two generations distant in age but very close in values and beliefs.

Eng. Luca Zappelli, owner of Sulpol, tells us the story of his company, born from his father’s intuition in the mid-70s and growing steadily in the following decades, until a dramatic event interrupted its progress in 2001.

A culpable fire, which broke out during an attempted theft, almost completely destroyed the plant, literally bringing the company to its knees.

The Zappelli family moves between hope and disenchantment, between those who, the new generations, would almost want to give up everything, and those who, instead, the founder, throws his heart over the obstacle and points the bow straight ahead.

In the end, they are all united in this desire for redemption and rebirth that leads the company to rebuild itself with constancy and stubbornness until it returns to producing and marketing its products and regaining lost ground.

When he speaks of the founder, Eng. Zappelli is almost moved and certainly does not regret that determined choice of the past, that courage to go on despite everything that forged him and prepared him to face the difficult years we are experiencing.

He follows in his father’s footsteps every week when, twice, he commutes between Rome, where he lives and has another company, and Trevi, where Sulpol was born and where it continues to be its headquarters.

Trevi is the place of origins, of his paternal family, origins that, despite feeling more Roman than Umbrian, he deeply loves. In fact, he confesses to us that he prefers to work in the province, where he feels the values, the bond with the company, the attachment of the collaborators to the ownership, that seriousness, sense of responsibility and reliability that distinguishes, in his opinion, ‘being Umbrian’.

A province, however, with lights and shadows that, if on one hand, offers a safe harbor in the loyalty of human resources, on the other reveals all its limits from the point of view of services and for a bureaucracy that often constitutes an unsustainable brake.

The rapport with Manini Prefabbricati began in the nineties: our company was already a client of Sulpol at that time and was noticed by the ownership because, among its competitors, Eng. Zappelli tells us, it is the one that always seeks the best, innovative product, that constantly strives to improve itself and offer the best, in turn, to its customers.

When it came to choosing who would provide a new expansion, the entrepreneur continues, even though I was little more than a boy then, my father and I were sure to entrust the task to Manini Prefabbricati SpA.

The mutual supplier-customer relationship was further cemented when the company was overwhelmed by the disastrous event of 2001, an occasion in which Manini Prefabbricati SpA stood by Sulpol, maintaining both roles of customer and supplier for the ‘rebirth’ of the new plant.

The structure that rose from the ashes of the previous one was a real gamble, but thanks to the trust and synergy between Sulpol and Manini Prefabbricati SpA, it was realized with timing and methods beyond the most optimistic expectations.

Today, after navigating, like most companies, in the rough seas of the economic crisis, Sulpol has consolidated its entrepreneurial reality, has several projects in the pipeline and looks to the future with confidence, renewing each time a light but very solid product and material.

At the end of our chat, Eng. Zappelli jokes when he says that since 1976 his company has been doing nothing but selling air, but it’s a ‘special’ air since it still manages to protect and insulate everything that needs to be protected.