The history of Sirsi Metallisator

The business company "SIRSI METALLISATOR" was born form the merger of two anonymous undertakings SIRSI and METALLISATOR, which took place on 28th September 1955.

SIRSI has been established in Turin on the 2nd April 1927 with quite a relevant capital of 1.150.000 Lira, divided between the two promoters Leonardo Cerini and Snia Viscosa. The former became the first chairman of the SIRSIn and the latter, the most famous Italian "rayon" producing manufacturer, founded by the well-known businessman Riccardo Gualino was in close business relations with important English and American companies in the same field.

Leonardo Cerini (Wikipedia), often quoted in university text books of economics and business, was the holder of a world renowned patent for "press" caustic soda recycling in the rayon artificial silk industries. Leonardo Cerini granted SIRSI the rights for world usage of said patent. The société CERINI in Paris and The RACE Inc. in the USA were founded for the production of these plants.

METALLISATOR ITALIANA S.r.l., founded in 1929 under the direct authorization of METALLISATOR A.G. in Berlin, began producing plants for cold metal spraying which required a complete sand-blasting of everything which needed metallizing.

Extraordinary photographic records of those years are available to show the high-tech level obtained and at the same time the variety of automatic and complex hardware machinery. METALLISATOR was the only sand-blasting machinery producer until after the Second World War.

In 1939 SIRSI began research work concerning a "pinch valve" based on lab tool known as "Hoffman's pincers".

At the end of the war, production, which had been slowed down, was resumed and METALLISATOR began manufacturing turbine shot-blasting machines. SIRSI, whose capital was entirely owned by the Cerini Family, resumed lab test research and launched on the market a new series of coupling-valves whose production started in the early 50s.