Canuti Tradizione Italiana

1 April 2014 Off By Pastaria

One of Italy’s leading quality pasta makers protagonist of a major corporate relaunch. Frozen foods and the HORECA channel the strong points of the new Canuti Tradizione Italiana.

The story of Pastificio Canuti—founded in 1950 and a pioneer of frozen fresh pasta in the 1980s—is an all-Italian one, from the very beginning right up to the present day. All-Italian for the places and ways in which this manufacturer was born and grew. For the care and passion it brings to research and production, and for the most recent developments involving the company which have instilled new life into its future prospects.

In an Italy in profound economic crisis, even well-structured pasta manufacturers firmly rooted in the market find themselves facing enormous difficulties. But, as often happens in the “Bel Paese”, the proverbial ability to have second thoughts—if necessary—has allowed this company to make profound changes in the way it operates in order to continue to do as well, or even better, than it has from 1950 to the present. And so, the well-established Canuti pasta manufacturing company, known not only for the high quality of its pasta but also the commitment of a family that has run the company for three generations, over the last two years has revamped the company’s corporate structure, management, main distribution channel and—as incredible as this may seem—even the quality of its product, raising it to an even higher level.

In this major process of corporate renovation which required two years of work and still cannot be considered finished, the original pasta company has changed its name to Canuti Tradizione Italiana and has made a major investment from every standpoint.

The most sensitive decision implemented by Denis Cecchetti (Sole Director), Gilberto Giovannini (Director of Sales) and Matteo Baldacci (Director of Production) was that of sacrificing the entire fresh pasta division to concentrate all their energy on frozen pasta. The fragmented nature of fresh pasta production, destined for sale in large retail outlets, involved an extremely high level of wasted energy which diverted from investment in new clients and new countries. Faced with having to reorganize its entire production system, the company chose to concentrate on the quality of frozen products and service to an increasingly-demanding professional clientele. As a result, the direction taken was to reduce the product range by ending production of fresh pasta for the large retail distribution channel in order to guarantee greater research and higher value added of frozen fresh pasta production for the HORECA channel.

In terms of quality, Canuti chose to respect the original spirit of the company’s founders by transforming good pasta into an excellent “ingredient” for the most demanding chefs in Italy and throughout the world. As a result, Cecchetti and his staff decided to make a leap in quality by placing the emphasis on even higher-quality raw materials, using a number of top-quality Italian products—protected denomination of origin, but above all specialties, including niche products with close ties to their local areas. Among these, to name only a few, are stone-ground flours, free-range eggs, Parmigiano Reggiano DOP, Bologna IGP Mortadella, sheep of the Val di Funes (Slow Food protected) and Sicilian scampi. In this way, Canuti Tradizione Italiana is investing in the updating of around 200 fresh IQF items, and an enviable ability to respond to specific client requests in terms of shape and custom regional recipes.

The quality of its sheet pasta is guaranteed by the use of a traditional bronze die and slow processing method, despite the over 1,100 tons of pasta produced each year for national HORECA channels (approx. 70% of its revenues) and over twenty markets in European countries, the United States, Middle East, Singapore and Japan.

Currently, there are five product lines and their names alone indicate a maniacal attention to quality. The first and widest, “Canuti”, offers the classics of the Italian pasta tradition; the second, “Le Riscoperte” (The Rediscovered) offers a selection of specialties made from stone-ground flours. “Le A Mano” (The Hand-Made), as the name itself in Italian indicates, are made one-by-one to offer a product of extremely high quality. “Canuti Express”, a line of quick-cooking pasta, was designed and created for major restaurants that do not want to use pre-cooked pasta, but require rapid cooking times. In fact, this pasta, although it is fresh and without having been subject to precooking during the manufacturing process, guarantees extremely quick preparation times. The most recent arrival is pasta with Halal certification for the Middle East and Far East markets, but also all those with a significant Muslim presence, such as France and Germany.

But the Canuti Tradizione Italiana revolution does not end here. In less than two years, major investment has also been undertaken on a structural level, with the introduction and use of new equipment and merging of two production areas which, in the past, operated separately. The company has also expanded the number of certifications it holds. In addition to UNI EN ISO 9001:2008 which it has possessed for some time, BRC and IFS were also added at the end of 2013, placing the company at the top of international product safety standards.

The internal organization of personnel was also overhauled radically, also thanks to the cooperation of its employees who, displaying a tremendous willingness to adapt and respond to the challenge placed before them.

In terms of communications, new strategies are in the process of being developed which include, among other things, the construction of a new corporate website.

All this has not only allowed them to maintain the entire portfolio of clients the Canuti family had created over sixty years of business activity, but also expand it, that will translate into well over 7 million euros in revenues in 2014.

Their goals for the future are ambitious. The company aims to increase its presence abroad, while continuing to remain true to Italian tradition and quality which, once again, has proven to be its secret weapon. But it’s not as if they need one. Cecchetti and his staff have shown that for us Italians, quality is not a goal to be attained, but a treasure to be safeguarded—always.

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