THE RIELLO
ENTREPRENEURIAL DYNASTY
Sierra S.p.A. has a history spanning over half a century. Fifty years of development, innovation, expansions and achievements that are the result of daily teamwork, centered around a winning business idea and rooted in a family-oriented company.
The founder, Ettore Riello, born in 1868, created the first Italian workshop in the burner sector: it was OFR, Officine Fratelli Riello, founded in Legnago in 1922 and grown alongside his sons Pilade, Raffaello, and Giuseppe. In a few years, the Riello brand becomes synonymous with quality, guarantee and reliability at an international level.
The new generational change is once again positive and proactive, heralding new entrepreneurial ideas: year after year, the Riello family creates new plants increasing production, cultivates business branches that evolve and develop keeping up with changes.
The turning point is the family’s ability to seize the opportunities offered by the evolution of technology. In the 1950s, Giordano Riello, Ettore’s grandson, an electrotechnician with experience in thermomechanics, foresaw the innovation of refrigeration circuits, realizing that the focus of refrigerating machines was the heat exchanger. Thus, in 1961, Riello Condizionatori-Aermec was born. The evolution of the companies led to the creation of Giordano Riello International Group, which also includes Sierra Sp.A.
FOR OVER FIFTY YEARS
AT THE FOREFRONT
It was 1970 when Sierra S.p.A. officially took shape. The company, with its heart in Isola della Scala, immediately combines field experience, a taste for innovation, aspiration for improvement with continuous research of quality. The consequences are immediate and lasting over time with a constant increase in commercial requests and, concurrently, productions.
Giordano Riello leads the company by combining innovation, care for production processes, and social awareness: in ’76 the first expansion of the workshop took place, hand in hand with the enhancement of the territory in which the company operates and the post-work period. After the mid-70s, Sierra S.p.A. enters the international scene, and the plant is enriched with new machinery, departments, and facilities. Between ’77 and ’83, the new office building was constructed, the shed and the technological center were expanded, and the first laboratory was structured. The ’80s continued full sail with the introduction of the first numerical control machine for sheet metal working and the first robot capable of autonomously following the painting phases. The following decade was no less significant with a further logistical expansion, the construction of the new technical office, while the years of the new millennium led to new robotic and automated procedures in the production phases and the inauguration of the new Sierra Research Center. The goals for the future remain those that have characterized the past half-century, namely production and continuous research and development of new products and new markets.
Engineer Riello has passed the scepter to his children Alessandro and Raffaella who, for decades, have worked in synergy with each other and with their father and have long been leading the Companies, carrying forward with enthusiasm and competence what he created. Already operational alongside them are the Founder’s grandchildren: Giordano Riello and Lorenzo Gasparini.
The Heart of Our Company
Raffaella Riello
President and CEO
Alessandro Riello
Vice President and CEO
Giordano Riello
Lorenzo Gasparini
Board of Directors
