Saima’s name means: Arezzo Society for Industrial Agricultural Machines. This firm, manufacturer of agricultural machines for land preparation was born in Arezzo and precisely at Indicatore in 1977.
One of its founders, particularly introduced in the agricultural technologic sector, attended to the society thanks to the help of some financiers who believed him accepting to make investments in this field.
Unfortunately, the proceeds of sales strongly reduced for various and different reasons put very soon into discussion this society same surviving.
So that in 1981 just in order to change this situation Mr. Paolo Moretti, an engeneer, at present President of SAIMA, was engaged as a Managing Director.
Thanks to his experience due to 11 years of managing responsibility in a very important international Group in Milan, Mr. Moretti was determining for the development and future of this firm.
"Under the technical aspect - he says - the management of a factory always answers to the same mechanisms, whatever is its sector of production; to change are the strategies, according to the proportional adjustments required by the market. As regards SAIMA and its new process of development, it was necessary to start "varying" the production following a solution that gave the excellent results everyone knows..."

To give a greater impulse to SAIMA, it was necessary to promote "different kinds" of production in two new sectors, i.e. the spray booths for car repairers on the one hand and the security booths for banks on the other.
The results obtained by such a transformation were very satisfying, and they became even more evident in May 1987 when the society was transformed in: SAIMA AGRICOLA S.r.l. for the production of agricultural equipment, SAIMA MECCANICA S.p.A. for the production of spray booths, SAIMA SICUREZZA S.p.A. for the production of security booths.
At the end of 1987 SAIMA was sold. Its Managing Director, Mr. Paolo Moretti and other managers already working inside it, Mr. Rinaldi, who is an engeneer, Mr. Scoscini, who is an accontant and Mr. Tiezzi, the Pippa brothers from U.S.A. and Mr. Iovannone from Canada, purchased it.
By a financial proceeding called "leveraged by in" both the most important societies, SAIMA SICUREZZA and SAIMA MECCANICA were acquired, while SAIMA AGRICOLA will be purchased later by its same Director becoming also an external working centre of SAIMA SICUREZZA.
"To analyse SAIMA’s evolution in a more detailed way - adds Mr. Moretti - we have to take a step behind, in 1981 when with a very reduced earn and high losses, my sole and obliged strategy, was to try increasing SAIMA’s proceeds of sales.
To make it possible, we had to exploit the opportunity of founds offered by EEC to handle training and skill courses for employees.
By the availability of new sums, it was possible to increase the proceeds of sales by means of those different kinds of production described above and by absorbing a bankrupting society situated near SAIMA headquarters which manufactured spray booths for body shops.
"The owner granted us a skilled staff with great manufacturing capacities - explains Mr. Moretti - even if we had to work with machines very different from the ones we were used to utilise and we treated sheet in spite of iron tubular, the field of action was always the metal and mecanical one. We needed to increase, our production against the crises, there fore we found the right agreement."
So, we started studying at the same time, both the spray booths and the security doors, (later called "booths in jargon").
The machines utilised to manufacture the spray booths as well as the security booths were the same and we also made us of a local firm that was realising a particular "metal detector" for security booths.
Our efforts and aim were to make Saima capable of exploiting in a planned and technological way, the ideas coming from the external environment, to answer to the needs of the same market.
The new security doors against robberies, equipped with the metal detector demonstrated to be the right product and started satisfying the Italian market with its urgent requests."
The different sectors of production changed the firm that became: SAIMA MECCANICA involved in the field of body shops, and SAIMA SICUREZZA in the banking one. "As regards SAIMA AGRICOLA indeed - goes on Mr. Moretti - the agricultural sector was so depressed and in a real declining phase that all our attempts to activate its production did not give any result.
Neither our engagement, in fact, nor the winning of important international tenders, seemed to be successful.
Among the important tenders which SAIMA AGRICOLA took part in, I want to underline the one in Algeria for the amount of 7 billions of liras, concerning the supply of a particular mechanised plough realised in a way totally different from those manufactured up to that moment.
In 1985 just because of this important work order, the firm had to face several difficulties due to very strict delivery terms and to the fact that the tool requested was a prototype. For this reason several external firms near SAIMA were checked and made active in order to produce the component parts and, in spite of the financial risks, we were satisfied enough with such an operation. It is true that even if it did not give us very high margins of profit it made evident once again, the independence and the versatility, which are typical of our society.
Thanks to these three different sectors of production we were able to reach soon very good results, even if, we were helped by some very favourable coincidences too, such us BANK of ITALY liberalisation of banking counters.
In 1988-89 the answers given by the production as well as those of the turnover were really important and SAIMA SICUREZZA became the first and absolute leader in the supply of access control for banks.
In 1988 SAIMA AGRICOLA was sold to its Managing Director.

Furthermore Saima is used to planning training courses for its importers to brush up these people’s knowledge and make them able to solve any problem concerning the spray booths assembling, installation and maintenance.
If on the one hand skilled technicians from abroad countries come to Italy periodically and attend such courses, on the other, SAIMA technicians too are used to going abroad to direct the insiders personally.
In Chile Saima has a joint venture called SAILE that will surely be an important key to develop the South American market definitely.
Thanks to the historical event of the European summit that took place in Florence the President of Chile, Mr. Frei signed a bilateral agreement with Italy as a "friend Country".
During that meeting, as Eng. Moretti is the Honoured Consul of Chile for Tuscany, we met Mr. Frei personally as well as other ministers of his staff and we were really happy for having had this opportunity. This important page of Italian policy both economic and social, makes us hoping as regards a brilliant future in the international relationships with this country and the other South American ones.

We can say to be the "self management" pioneers which is now the only philosophy actually answering to the security market needs.
The new concept of "self-management" had a great success: in Italy for the first time we gave banks the opportunity of installing security doors that did not need the presence of a policeman inside the bank, reducing in this way the banks costs too.
In the abroad market too, however, the news concerning the "self-management" of security doors, was a success, particularly in Spain where it was introduced by SAIMA SEGURIDAD.
As we have already told, an important chapter of this story was the liberalisation of the banking counters done by the BANK of ITALY.
Thanks to in fact, in order to satisfy its clients with the great request of "self-managed" security booths, SAIMA had to plan and operate in a different way finding several difficulties in doing it.
As regards the abroad market, SAIMA network of sale is based on distributors, commercial and representing partnerships.
Now we are in France Austria, Germany, U.S.A., South America and Taiwan too.
Our customer knows to be in front of a very well organised and reliable firm: our products are qualified and tested because the labour, the maintenance and the industrialisation are submitted to a quality control too, as, our society operates according to EEC and ISO 9001 rules.
Today by utilising the electronics too in the field of access control, which we own many national and international patents in, we are able to offer the best degree of security to our customer.
"...We have always been the first in the security market even if, obviously many competitors have been trying to copy us.
We manufacture special kinds of access for disable people with always-faster openings and now we also are trading some models supplied with cameras and biometric readers of fingerprints.
Therefore all people entering the booth for the first time leave their fingerprint while a camera films their face. In such a way, there is no difficulty and the transit neither stops, nor is made slower. The images are memorised on "hard disk" for some days up to the saturation of the disk, which self regenerates automatically.
There is no privacy violation for the bank customer as this system does not associate a person’s name to the corresponding face and the images are simply memorised being either transmitted to a "central computer" or issued in case of need (such as robberies or burglary attempts).
All these systems, called biometric systems, are studied, manufactured and supplied by MESA a society belonging to SAIMA Group involved in the security field and working in an independent and autonomy way.
One of the most important reasons to which is due SAIMA SICUREZZA success is surely given by its Maintenance Department.
Such a service has also been organising training courses that periodically involve both technicians and insiders and it is surely a further instrument of SAIMA’s production success and in case of need it is supported by the most innovative means of communications such as the "video conference on line".