1.
Broad product range and tailored approach.
sme stories
We are in Genoa in the second half of the 19th century, where Andrea Costa begins trading olive oil and textiles from Sardinia to Liguria. He sets a goal for himself: to specialise in sourcing raw olive oil from Mediterranean countries and exporting it overseas under the Dante brand, which was officially established in 1898.
However, the powerful Genoese industrial family gradually transformed: in 1985, it sold Olio Dante to the Dutch conglomerate Unilever, which, having lost interest in olive oil in 2008, sold it to the Spanish group SOS-Cuetara. This group, in turn, transferred ownership in January 2009 to the Mataluni Oil Mills in Montesarchio. After 24 years, the brand had finally returned to Italy, thanks to Mataluni, a visionary entrepreneur who expanded it with several notable brands familiar on Italian family tables: Topazio, OiO, Lupi, Olita, and smaller brands like GiCo. However, this expansion process inevitably incurred significant costs.
In 2013, during a historically complex phase for financial markets, the Company faced difficulties due to declining profits and a substantial debt load accumulated during the expansion phase. At that moment, Mataluni realised the company lacked the internal expertise to manage an optimal restructuring process and decided to open the company’s capital to an institutional investor.
For this reason, Olio Dante welcomed Oxy Capital as an institutional investor specialising in corporate turnarounds, led by two former McKinsey partners, Stefano Visalli and Enrico Luciano. The latter, a corporate finance professor at the Polytechnic University of Turin, also assumed the role of CEO of Olio Dante.
The company's operations continue, focusing on boosting industrial profitability to the highest levels of the sector's margins. Among future challenges is a focus on product certification and ongoing support for the company’s growth, fostering the interests of all stakeholders. The commitment is to pursue business growth for proprietary brands, always with an eye on innovation.
“We have perfectly harmonious management,” explains Mataluni, “and we are among the few in our sector who still believe in product innovation. This is precisely why we launched a more affordable product than extra virgin olive oil, called Dante ConDisano - a blend of EVO oil and seed oils, flavoured with Mediterranean herbs and enriched with vitamin D for health purposes.”
In the current context, marked by the exponential increase in olive oil prices due primarily to drought in Andalusia, which has reduced by half olive production and quadrupled raw material costs over the past 50 months, the company recognises the need to protect the quality of EVO oil without losing sight of consumers’ need for affordability.
illimity has stepped in to support Olio Dante, ensuring business continuity with a flexible and swift approach that immediately addressed the company’s needs. Initially, with a medium-to-long-term operation to facilitate a solution for debt restructuring through its internal restructuring expertise.
Simultaneously, illimity was also able to support the company by leveraging factoring, enabling optimal cash flow management. The bank's tailored approach, combining technology with a "human touch," allowed illimity to partner with the company for medium-to-long-term growth, aiming to achieve the challenging goal of full corporate recovery and restoring it to a healthy state.
