After World War II, the Fronzoni family owned a successful construction business in Italy building roads, tunnels and participating in many other public works projects. In the 1950s, the family purchased a half-constructed paper mill located in the foothills of the Apennini mountains.
By June 1960 “Impresa Gino Fronzoni” completed the construction of a specialty paper in Alife, near Napoli, IT and thus established the first Omnia paper mill.
Initially built to use the ultra-pure water of Mount Miletto, the mill produced highly technical filter papers, for selective European wine producers, pharmaceutical applications and controlled ashes filters.
Throughout the first decade, production was diversified into very different industrial fields, maintaining our mission of manufacturing and developing niche’-products for various specialty markets. As a result, Omnia cultivated a special reputation of being a flexible, small volumes producer with highly skilled people capable of developing successful solutions to difficult problems within several industrial markets, including:
Parchment (fine papers)
Watermark “Raffaello” (distinguished European branded fine papers product)
Gasket materials
Colored printing papers
Invitation stationary sheeted by hand
In the 1970s, Omnia continued to successfully grow its’ business, which also required the company to focus its strategies and investments. The Company made the following two strategic decisions:
Sell its’ major branded products (Raffaello) to a company called Pigna.
Concentrate capital and focus on further developing the industrial materials market. To support this decision, the Company financed the construction of a second paper machine.
In the 1980s, the company installed a new saturator and continued its Mission as a producer of “advanced” materials for many industries while expanding its know-how, through worldwide technological and commercial partnerships.
Examples of activities performed during this exciting period were:
Patented technology, developed with Montedison, replacing Asbestos fibers within the composition of depth filter sheet for liquid filtrations (pharmaceutical, food and many others)
Gas detector paper, developed for the US government in cooperation with a Canadian chemical producer.
First insecticide absorbent board producer in Europe.
Further refined or resin beater addition process focused on enlarging our breadth and depth of product offering within the gasket materials market;
Abrasive backing papers for industrial abrasive belts and sand papers.
In the 1990s, the company made advancements in the following two areas:
In 1992, Europe ultimately passed regulations banning the use of asbestos fibers. Based on Omnia’s earlier asbestos-free technology for depth filtration in the 1980’s, Omnia became one of the first companies worldwide to manufacturer and successfully market asbestos-free gasket materials;
In 1993, a second paper mill was purchased and renovated expanding the company’s capability to compete in the lightweight automotive air filtration and dielectric papers technical market.
In 2003, Omnia purchased the assets of a 100-year-old specialty paper company located in Beaver Falls, NY (USA). The facility had a long and rich history of successfully manufacturing automotive gaskets as well as many other latex reinforced products for industries such as Day Planners, Journals, Book Binding, Jean’s Label and Luxury Packaging.
At the time of purchase, the Beaver Falls mill was not operating. It had no products, no people, and no power. At start-up, Omnia began operations with only eight (8) employees and a vision of establishing Omnia as a global company by making and selling specialties in North America.
After several years of hard work, the Beaver Falls team achieved financial success just before the great recession of 2008. US operation excelled during the recession due to their ability to build a robust business based on a diverse group of niche products serving many essential technical markets including specialty filtration, medical packaging, aerospace protective products, fire-retardant media along with many others.
Unfortunately, the Great Recession of 2008 took its’ toll on our operations in Italy and forced the company to live through a period of consolidation and reorganization in Alife and Pratella, IT which ultimately helped to renew its financial strength.
By 2017, with the reorganization finally behind us, 100% of the ownership was returned to its origins.
Today, the company remains a privately held company under the ownership of Gino Fronzoni with operations in both Alife, Italy and Beaver Falls, NY. Omnia continues to work diligently to grow and diversify both its’ customer base and markets served. The organizational structure now allows each manufacturing site to take full advantage of investments into long term strategic capital and continue expanding the diversity of our advanced materials and markets.
Throughout our history, the Company success has always been based on its’ employees single-minded determination to succeed and deliver B2B product solutions valued by its’ Customers. Based on these two elements, we are confident our business will continue to evolve and demonstrate a stubborn resiliency to the ever-challenging headwinds that occur in any business environment.
In 2020, the Company changed its’ official name to Omnia Advanced Materials to better reflect who we are and what we do. However, remaining the same is our code of conduct, which has been our guiding principles from the beginning.