Shaping the Future of an Italian Icon

By Luke King

Fernando Bertoni is steering Fagioli toward a sharper, more strategic future, realigning its focus on key markets and regions – the executive tells Breakbulk how he's making it happen.

From Issue 2, 2025 of Breakbulk Magazine.

Now in charge of Fagioli – Italy’s famous heavy-lifting and transport company with a 70-year heritage – serial CEO Fernando Bertoni is finding plenty of familiar territory in the project cargo space.

Born in Argentina, Bertoni spent over 18 years at General Electric, where he led global and regional operations in GE’s Energy business. He has worked and lived in the United States, Brazil, France and Italy, where he currently resides (in Milan).

“In all the years I spent in the oil and gas and energy business, my key customers were fundamentally the engineering, procurement and construction companies we are dealing with today,” he says. “Those are the same players that I dealt with for almost two decades in my professional life, likewise for many of our end customers.

“It’s comforting because my work now is closely related to what I’ve done in the past, to the extent that I’ve spent a fair amount of time and developed profound relationships with some of the same people. It’s something that helps to gain a good perspective on what the problems our customers are trying to solve really are.”

After decades of family ownership, Fagioli underwent a significant restructuring in 2017, when QuattroR, a Milan-based private equity fund acquired 49% of the company (they now control the business with a 75% stake). The Fagioli family retain a 25% interest and are “a minority shareholder, but a very important shareholder indeed,” says Bertoni.

In the last 12 months, the company reached an agreement to refinance its debt with Italian and European banks – a vote of confidence in Fagioli, according to the new CEO. “That is something we share with our customers and partners with pleasure and a bit of pride as we continue to grow and reposition the company in the future, with very low levels of debt compared to our peers in the industry.”

Bertoni joined Fagioli in February 2024, tasked with “the realignment of our strategic focus to key markets and regions.” That, says Bertoni, means concentrating on the energy transition segment (spanning everything from power generation projects, to oil and gas facilities and renewable energy), heavy industry (including shipbuilding) and complex infrastructure projects such as airport development, civil transportation infrastructure and football stadiums.

This strategy marks a departure from the company’s previous global spread. “Being everywhere in the world with assets and resources is just an allocation and is not beneficial to anyone, whether our customers or ourselves,” he says. Instead, Fagioli aims to cultivate depth over breadth, focusing on areas where it can bring a competitive advantage, like in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Australia.

“We are heavily involved in offshore and onshore wind developments on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, as well as nuclear projects,” says Bertoni. “I see more of that developing in parts of Europe, such as Poland. We see a nuclear energy revival, in a sense, and Fagioli has historically carved out a very important presence in the nuclear industry.

“That’s where we are in a nutshell: energy transition, heavy industries and complex infrastructure. We offer an integrated approach from an engineering and logistics standpoint, where developing the most efficient solution, independent of the equipment used, is the differentiator that we bring into the marketplace, especially in our key markets around the world.”

The Importance of Innovation

Innovation remains a cornerstone of Fagioli’s strategy and Bertoni stresses the importance of Fagioli’s engineering acumen. “Our technology plays a fundamental role, particularly in areas like complex infrastructure. We’ve been involved in pioneering solutions, from some of the most complex LNG projects in the U.S., to flood prevention systems in Venice, to the reconstruction of key bridges in Denmark.”

Today, the company employs around 550 staff and has established four “centers of excellence” located in Reggio Emilia, Italy, where the company is headquartered; Houston, Texas; Abu Dhabi, UAE; and Perth, Australia, where Fagioli has established a 50-50 joint venture with Australian construction and engineering company Monadelphous.

Bertoni said Fagioli is working successfully with partners in the Middle East. “For example, in the Abu Dhabi market, we have partnered on a number of projects with DSV, the global logistics and transportation business, and with ADNOC Logistics, the logistics arm of the state oil and gas company in Abu Dhabi. This is a project-related partnership that is working extremely well.

“It’s also a natural fit for us to partner at a project level with crane providers. We clearly own and otherwise lease a large number of cranes, but that side of the industry is not necessarily where our DNA comes from. We are what you would call a speciality heavy-lift engineering company, in our guts.”

2025 will see Fagioli expand its fleet with the purchase of up to 250 Arctic-enabled self-propelled modular transporters (SPMTs) from an undisclosed European manufacturer. Explaining the investment, Bertoni says: “Since February last year, we have been engaged in a huge oil and gas project in Alaska, where our customer is ConocoPhillips.

“We have been selected as the sole heavy-lifting supplier for the next four or five years and, at the peak of the project, we will have over 400 SPMT lines and over 70 full-time employees employed in Alaska.”

An additional, future round of SPMT acquisition will see another 250 units added to the Fagioli fleet. “We will go from about 2,000 SPMTs today to about 2,500 in the global fleet,” says Bertoni.

A Long Transition

Bertoni draws a wealth of experience from his tenure at General Electric, which he has found useful in navigating today’s energy-related projects. “The transition from traditional fossil fuels to a diversified energy mix is a prolonged journey, and natural gas plays a crucial bridging role,” he says.

“We are involved in everything that has to do with natural gas, whether it is an LNG plant, or a new gas field. We do see a number of global natural gas projects for the next five, ten years that support this concept of transition.

“This includes a significant acceleration in activity in the North American market following the election and the change in administration in the U.S. There, we are talking about traditional oil and gas projects, but it’s also interesting to note that we have not seen a slowdown in the renewable projects that we have been involved within the U.S. They continue to go at the same pace, at the same level.”

Last year, Fagioli carried out a record-breaking operation at the Seatrium AmFELS shipyard in Brownsville, Texas, where it used 880 axle lines of TII Scheuerle SPMTs to move an offshore wind turbine installation and intervention vessel weighing over 27,000 tonnes.

The Charybdis was transferred from the shipyard onto three barges for its subsequent launch into the water and, in the process, Fagioli claimed three world records: for the largest number of axle lines under one load; the heaviest weight moved by SPMT axle lines; and the heaviest load on wheels transferred onto barges.

On reaching the river bank, the vessel was transferred to three parallel positioned barges, also by means of the 880 SPMT axle lines.

Built by American energy company Dominion Energy, the Charybdis is the first vessel of its kind to comply with Jones Act requirements stipulating that transportation between American ports may only be provided by vessels that were built in the U.S. and owned by individuals holding an appropriate transportation license.

“We are very proud to have completed what is really a world record, carrying out some very complex engineering work and then the lifting and transportation,” said Bertoni. “This points to our extensive experience in both onshore and offshore projects in the U.S.”

Center of Gravity

Away from work, Bertoni likes to keep active and enjoys watching and playing sports with his family. As well as tennis, he enjoys skiing, though admits he can “no longer keep up with my sons.” The family are Inter Milan FC fans “in a pretty big way” and try to watch their team play football in Milan “as much as we can.”

Asked about his ties in Argentina and Italy, Bertoni says: “Italy is, I would say, my center of gravity. There is no question, I still have the memories of a 20-year-old, growing up in Buenos Aires, but I left the country many, many years ago. I have vivid memories of my childhood there, but the greater part of my both personal and professional life is outside of Argentina.

“There are a number of very important changes happening in Argentina today but, clearly, the country needed a bit of rigor and discipline from a financial standpoint, from a macroeconomic standpoint. It is my hope that this translates and trickles down to the individual level, so that the people feel the benefit.”

Before we say goodbye, Bertoni reflects on Fagioli’s proud Italian heritage. “The company, as you know, was founded and built on the growth of the Italian industry. Fagioli started off as a heavy road transportation company and we continue that part of the business. When it comes to heavy road transport in Italy, the Fagioli name is clearly a brand name, still fully recognized as such.

“If you talk to some of the bigger industrial players, power generation people, for example, or the equipment providers, whether Italian or Europeans that work in the Italian market, they will tell you they don’t transport anything in Italy if it doesn’t go by Fagioli. Whilst we are also busy with global projects, we are carrying on that Italian tradition today.”

Fagioli will be exhibiting at Breakbulk Europe 2025.