With over 50 years of experience, L’Artistica Savigliano stands out for its ongoing pursuit of technological innovation and sustainability. The company’s latest investment with Heidelberg reaffirms its commitment to offer cutting-edge solutions, enhancing efficiency and production quality with 100% quality control. This long-standing partnership continues to grow stronger, demonstrating how technology, vision, expertise, and strategy can support the growth and evolution of the printing and packaging industry.
L’Artistica Savigliano is one of the few companies in Italy to house multiple departments in-house, offering a comprehensive range of services across three strategic business lines: editorial and luxury catalogue printing, labels, and complex packaging. Among their most captivating creations we were particularly struck by their sample collection book, a concrete example of creativity, complexity and technical and aesthetic perfection.
Savigliano in the province of Cuneo has a strong connection with the printing sector and in particular with typographic art, by virtue of the fact that the first Piedmontese printing house was founded in this town in 1470. This historical anecdote is contained in the splendid monograph that L’Artistica Savigliano created in 2019 on the occasion of its 50th anniversary, thus paying homage to a consolidated tradition carried forward today with pride and determination by the second generation, very attentive to the roots of its reality, but equally determined to structure the company to compete not only on the national printing and packaging market but also beyond the border, with unique products capable of making the difference.
A benchmark for high-quality printing
Today, Marco Daniele is CEO of L’Artistica Savigliano alongside partners Elena Lorenzato and Luciano Leardo. Marco, the son of one of the company’s founding partners, comes from an important career path outside the family business in the food industry, far from ink, stacks of paper, die cutters, and binding machines. Yet, this background has proven crucial in managing the highly structured company that L’Artistica Savigliano has become.
Quality has always been a hallmark of the company, particularly in the markets for book and catalogue printing, where it has quickly become a reference point for anastatic reprints and historical archiving projects for the city of Turin and the Province of Cuneo.
A first important change, mainly linked to the technological evolution of printing machines, took place between the 1980s and 1990s. Until then, the company had relied on Italian-made presses (from now-defunct historic brands), which, while less advanced, met the market’s needs at the time. Wanting to transform the company, which until then had been based on concepts linked to craftsmanship, towards an industrial production process, it became essential to find a technological partner with which to start a path of growth and development. “Our relationship with Heidelberg began in 1992 with the purchase of our first Speedmaster. The fact that we’re still celebrating this partnership today shows that we made the right choice”, says CEO Marco Daniele.
A targeted growth strategy, driven by bold, often countercurrent choices
While a technological shift was already underway, the company’s management also pursued bold and forward-thinking strategic choices, often going against the market trends of the time by embracing strong diversification.
As print runs declined and the overall interest in printed products waned, L’Artistica Savigliano saw an opportunity and wasn’t afraid of change. In the late 1990s, the company made a pivotal move by entering the narrow-web label printing market, a courageous and culturally significant decision. Introducing a narrow-web flexographic press into a business built on high-end offset printing was not such an obvious action. Yet in true L’Artistica style, always ready to seize opportunity, this new direction opened doors to a fast-growing market segment.
What began as a bold bet has since paid off: today, the label printing department runs three narrow-web lines, one of which is a Gallus, further confirming the strategic importance of having Heidelberg as a trusted partner across all areas of the business.
Packaging and folding carton as a driver of diversification
The second step in L’Artistica Savigliano’s diversification strategy came in the early 2000s with the expansion into the packaging and folding carton market, enabling the company to grow significantly in both production volume and turnover.
These were the years during which the company expanded its production site, which now includes three separate buildings totaling approximately 8,000 square meters, each dedicated to one of the company’s three strategic business lines: books and catalogues (offset printing); labels (with inline multi-process technologies); folding carton (with die-cutting, embellishment, and binding systems). The company now employs a team of about 60 people.
Over the past decade, the arrival of the second generation has brought a strong push toward specialization within each of the three production areas. These units are clearly defined and independently managed, particularly from a cost-control perspective, while still remaining interconnected through a centralized company-wide information management system, where detailed data analysis drives meticulous planning.
“For us, diversification was a strategic choice, not something imposed by market pressures. I believe that decision has given us a competitive edge of several years; we are a 360-degree reference player in the paper and board printing sector, and each business unit represents one-third of our overall revenue, with a focus on high-quality niche products”, says CEO Marco Daniele.
Thanks to the strong growth in sectors such as labels and packaging over the past three years, the company has increased its turnover by approximately 25%. These results have led L’Artistica Savigliano to invest heavily in technology and innovative processes to meet the demands of fast-growing markets. Among them is the label sector, where the cross-functional partnership with Heidelberg has enabled the company to optimize its technology investments, supporting growth not only in its traditional areas like premium books and catalogues but also in packaging and labels.
Today, L’Artistica Savigliano’s production capacity is very high, yet not fully saturated, leaving significant room for further growth in the near future.
“For us, in-line quality control is now a standard, not an option; the experience we gained with Gallus and OMET narrow-web presses for labels, featuring advanced register control systems, was so successful that we chose to replicate this approach on our Heidelberg sheet-fed press. We’ve integrated every possible technological innovation that allows us to maximize quality control and productivity”, adds Daniele.
Another essential factor for market competitiveness is the ability to process a high volume of diverse jobs quickly, across a highly varied fleet of machines. Today, L’Artistica Savigliano handles around 50 jobs per day, across different printing lines, ranging from lightweight paper (50/60 gsm) to heavy board for packaging (700/800 gsm). Being able to optimize turnaround times is not only vital for staying competitive but is also a significant added value for clients.
Gallus and OMET: strategic partners for narrow-web label printing
When L’Artistica Savigliano decided to expand into the narrow-web roll label market, the company didn’t simply transfer its sheet-fed offset expertise into this new segment. Instead, it built a completely new business line from scratch, establishing a dedicated department focused solely on label production using both offset and flexographic technologies.
In this area, Heidelberg, through its ownership of Gallus, has proven to be a strategic partner for offset printing in the label sector as well. Each product line at L’Artistica Savigliano follows its own operational path, with highly skilled and specialized personnel assigned to each type of production. However, what unifies all departments is the centralized company management system and the cross-functional quality control operations applied consistently across all business units.
Another unique feature is the company’s in-house prepress department, which manages both offset plates and flexo photopolymers, giving this Piedmont-based printer full autonomy over the entire production process.
2024 exceeded expectations for the company, with strong growth in the packaging sector and solid performance in its traditional markets, particularly catalogues, thanks to deep specialization in specific segments. Growth in the label market has also remained steady and consistent.
“The first few months of 2025 have followed the trend seen at the end of 2024, when the printing market showed signs of slowing. For this reason, I expect this year to be focused on consolidating our position, we’re seeing very promising signals in specific sectors, particularly in complex folding carton products such as sample books, a field where we’re among the leaders in Italy and now aim to expand at European level. This is made possible by the specialized expertise we’ve brought into the company and the work of our in-house R&D office, which develops custom solutions in close collaboration with our clients”, concludes Daniele, by hinting at the company’s next strategic investment, that, like all major decisions at L’Artistica Savigliano, will be guided by data-driven analysis, now an indispensable tool to lead a company towards horizons of success.
