Revitalising industry thanks to innovation

In 1993, in order to save jobs which were threatened by an owner’s decision to relocate his paint company’s site, Antonio Molina bought the company. He decided on an ambitious development strategy. This included external growth so that the company could become national and then international; choosing the railway industry market to avoid costly marketing expenses; investing in R&D so that it accounted for 10% of the turnover; creating a subsidiary dedicated to research; diversifying into the automobile and aeronautical sectors; and on each occasion using the most up-to-date technology. Because of the priority given to innovation over the past fifteen years Mäder has become the European leader in its field. It has increased its number of employees from eighty to eight hundred and multiplied its turnover twenty-fold. Antonio Molina is currently applying the same strategy to the Matikem competitiveness cluster and its Verem programme which is focused on systems of complex materials. He aims to make the newly formed Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie region the centre of European bio-economy.