Remembering Luciano Berti


L


uciano Berti was more than just the founder of the Ali Group — for more than 50 years, he was its heart. He guided the company from its beginning as a warewashing equipment manufacturer in Italy to its current status as a global equipment


powerhouse spanning 80 companies with 10,000 employees in 30 countries. Berti was born in 1931 in Alessandria in the


Piedmont region of Italy. Upon completing his general studies in Italy, Berti came to the US in 1954, and studied sociology at Stanford University in California on a Fulbright scholarship. “My degree in sociology was due to intellectual interest,” he said in 2013. “I still have that intellectual curiosity in people.” Although his professors wanted him to stay and


study longer in the States, Berti returned to Italy and received a doctorate in political science from the University of Turin. After a stint in the military and a brief time teaching sociology, Berti was still looking for something more challenging and exciting. He wanted to become an entrepreneur. In 1962, “I put an ad in the Milan newspaper,” he said, “stating who I was and what I wanted to do.” Tat ad connected him with a manufacturer of commercial warewashing machines. Within a few months, he helped the company become profitable but quickly became frustrated with the firm’s slow rate of growth. He wanted to be his own boss. So, in Milan in 1963, he founded his first company, Comenda, which soon became a major player in the warewashing industry. When he married his beloved wife Giancarla in 1967, Berti found a partner who would be at his side as his business grew until her passing in 2019. Her dedication to the Ali Group was as strong as her husband’s. In fact, in the early days of the Ali Group, Luciano and Giancarla Berti would attend industry events together and it was not unusual for Giancarla to travel with Luciano to trade shows to assist him in setting up trade show booths. In 1972, with the opening of Comenda’s first


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Aliworld 7


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