Interview with Settima Meccanica S.r.l.
08/06/2026
The company was founded in 1978 with the goal of producing high-tech three-screw pumps for the elevator and hydraulic platform industries.
At the time, we had an external sales organization based primarily on agents.
We also expanded further by turning to integrators, but always relying on a sales force external to the company.
Our foreign markets throughout the 1980s were primarily Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and neighboring countries.
Subsequently, in the 1990s, we took a further step forward by establishing an internal sales organization and expanding our product range for industrial applications, particularly three-screw pumps for OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) for lubrication applications, such as for rotating mechanical parts such as gearboxes, power transmission systems, turbines, compressors, or cooling systems.
During those years, we expanded our production, always using three-screw technology in accordance with API specifications, particularly required by the Oil & Gas industry.
Our geographic target at the time was still focused on Europe, but we were already present in North America and East Asia (Japan, Korea, China, and India), namely, those industrialized or developing countries where our products fit perfectly into OEM production.
This brings us to the 2000s, which saw a real technological leap in our products and in the quality of the entire company, namely the invention of "continuum®" helical pumps, a technology that revolutionized the hydraulics industry.
Helical rotor hydraulic pumps were invented, patented, and manufactured by Settima Meccanica, opening the door to a wide range of industrial and mobile applications, allowing us to penetrate many more sectors with unrivaled technology.
The continuum® pump has the great advantage of being quiet and offering greater efficiency.
For example, if we consider how noisy a garbage truck is, we can understand the noise we're talking about.
If we imagine an industrial setting where multiple machines use older-technology pumps, we can understand how important the introduction of a quiet pump can be for the quality of life and health of workers.
The range of industrial applications benefiting from this "revolution" in the world of hydraulic pumps was truly broad: in addition to elevators and lifting equipment, it also included garbage trucks, agricultural machinery, goods handling and storage equipment, electric and hybrid industrial and commercial vehicles, plastic injection machines, compactors, machine tools, and more.
The ability to meet specific customer needs led to such growth in 2014 and 2015 that the company opened two subsidiaries, one in the United States and the other in China to serve the Asian market.
Now, after years of research and development, we have a new revolution from Settima Meccanica: 4Q®Continuum®.
This is a true departure from the past, as the evolution of the Continuum® pumps has led to a "hydraulic machine" that, starting with a double-helical rotor, allows for use in all four quadrants.
In essence, the new hydraulic machine can function both as a pump and as a motor, and in both cases bidirectionally.
This means that the 4Q®Continuum® is not only quiet, ultra-compact, and capable of bidirectional operation, but above all, it allows for energy recovery and generation exactly like an alternator.
The significance of this innovation is enormous, as energy savings and recovery can significantly increase the range of battery-powered vehicles (e.g., forklifts) or, conversely, reduce the size and weight of the batteries installed on the vehicles themselves.
This technology has already been patented internationally, and we expect that once industrialized and commercially distributed, it will have a truly significant—we might even call it revolutionary—impact on the hydraulic pump industry.
This product will open new frontiers in the design of electro-hydraulic systems. This overview highlights the importance of technological development and Settima's competitive edge in international markets.
Today, the challenge for many small businesses with good ideas and high-potential products is precisely how to protect the value of their research and development and prevent their technologies from being readily copied.
How do you address this crucial issue? Protecting your brand and the product of your company's ingenuity is certainly an issue that requires constant attention and vigilance.
The key elements of our strategy can be summarized as the registration of international trademarks and patents, the selection of reliable partners who provide guarantees and commit to honoring agreements and contracts, protecting Settima's expertise, legal protection and therefore the ability to take action against any counterfeiting or contractual violations, and, above all, an offensive strategy, namely the continuous evolution and technological innovation of our products in response to customer needs. We aim to always have a flagship product that is unrivaled in terms of performance and efficiency, so that constant innovation allows us to provide optimal solutions for the highly specific industrial applications we serve.
We would like to thank Dr. Luca Pellegrini, General Manager of Settima Meccanica, and Dr. Gaia Laneri of the Marketing Office for kindly answering our questions.
Link in bio> https://www.piacenzaexport.it/intervista-a-settima-meccanica-srl
