SPEA S.P.A.

Creativity. Innovation. Genius. Since 1976, SPEA has been inventing, designing and manufacturing the best automatic machinery for testing electronic devices, such as semiconductor wafers, microchips, sensors and MEMS, electronic boards, power modules and batteries for electric vehicles and consumer devices. And it is now a world leader in this very high-technology industry.
This milestone has been achieved thanks to massive investments – up to 20 percent of annual sales – in research and development. Working closely with engineers and researchers from the world’s largest hi-tech companies, SPEA’s R&D team designs and builds industrial test machines when the product to be tested is still on paper. This is a valuable competitive advantage for the electronics and semiconductor industries, which are thus able to accelerate the development of their products in a market characterized by speed and constant change. “In our business sector,” says President and CEO Luciano Bonaria, “research is indispensable. For our customers to have the systems for testing new technological products on time is crucial, and this requires investing a substantial share of turnover in human resources engaged in research and design. There is a need for fresh ideas and mindsets.”
From cars to smartphones to the most complex devices in medical and aerospace. It is with SPEA machines that electronics and semiconductor manufacturers around the world ensure the quality and reliability of their products every day. In fact, careful factory testing of each individual device is the only way to ensure that the electronics we use every day are free from defects, especially latent defects that will only turn into failures during use.
In more than 45 years, growth has been continuous: today the group employs more than 1,000 people worldwide (more than 850 at the Volpiano plant itself), while turnover exceeds 190 million euros a year.
In an Italian industrial context in which the watchwords are delocalization to low-cost countries, employment of precarious workforce and deindustrialization of the territory, SPEA has chosen to globalize sales – SPEA’s products are distributed in over 85 countries, and the export share covers 90 percent of turnover – but to keep research and production in Italy: SPEA machinery is designed and manufactured in Italy, in the Volpiano plant.