Scaip, high specialization for agriculture and shipbuilding

Scaip's growth is largely tied to a partnership with Saipem, which has entrusted the company from Parma with the maintenance, revision and servicing of its fleet of machinery. Tractors, of course, but also special vehicles for the oil & gas industry. Thanks to this collaboration, the company from Emilia Romagna has developed a wide body of technical expertise necessary to develop a range of highly competitive products

Scaip is a business from Emilia Romagna founded by Franco Grassi in Parma (with headquarters in San Pancrazio) in the early 1960s, an historical and very dynamic period for the Italian economy which, in the aftermath of World War II, was in full boom. The company started its business by offering technical assistance and mechanical inspection services not only for dozers, loaders and crawlers but, more generally, for industrial and agricultural machinery. At that time, Franco Grassi’s company had not the current industrial dimension, but had already a solid technical-professional base, a necessary premise that would shortly allow it to make a leap in quality. The turning point was reached in 1972, when Saipem – one of the most established Italian brands in the onshore and offshore oil industry (for drilling, engineering, supply, construction and installation of pipes and large plants in the oil & gas sector) – entrusted Scaip with the repair and revision of its own agricultural tractors and special equipment in use in the pipeline sector. Thanks to this collaboration, the company from San Pancrazio began to develop a specific know-how in the oil & gas sector. The technical skills acquired allowed Franco Grassi’s business to design and market the first Scaip-branded technologies: hydrostatic hoods, vacuum pneumatic lifters, bending machines, welding tractors, as well as vehicles specifically designed for the transportation of pipes, flatbed tractors (also available in a radio-controlled version and equipped with scrubber for tunnel operations), not to mention the crawler chassis trucks for special applications, or the heavy duty crawler tractors (with steel track) with a horsepower range between 143 and 350 and designed to offer maximum productivity both in land- and woodworking. Step by step, the company has consolidated a high technical specialization, that allows it to fully meet the technological demand of the oil & gas market, where it interacts with a huge number of industrial partners. To have an idea of how the company has grown since the late 1970s, one only needs to consider the incredible figure of 20,000 kilometers of oil pipelines manufactured by the machines developed at the San Pancrazio’s plant. But Scaip has not stopped yet. The success achieved in the industrial sector acted as a powerful incentive to a wise production differentiation. First in the construction sector and then, from the 1990s, in the OEM agricultural sector. Today, the company founded by Franco Grassi is a competitive and well-structured industrial reality, with a business mainly concentrated on foreign markets. In fact, almost all of the turnover (94%) comes from exports and the main trading partners are the US, China, India, Australia and Mexico. Over the years, Scaip has gained an international dimension, without ever giving up on the milestones of its entrepreneurial tradition. In this sense, the company is firmly anchored to the values of its own community and territory. By using the same words of the founder, the company is like a compass that even today orientates the strategies of a reality that is well-rooted in its territory, but with a forward-looking gaze.