HISTORY
The Shareholders
SteelFORCE Group is a Belgian trading company based in Antwerp and in steel since the early 70s’. Through the years, SteelForce Group has gone through intensive organic and M&A growth, placing it today among the biggest private steel traders in the world, with twenty-eight companies located all over the globe and sales across 80 countries.
HISTORY
The Shareholders, Steelforce Group is a Belgian trading company based in Antwerp and in steel since the early seventies. Through the decades, Steelforce Group has gone through intensive organic and M&A growth, placing it among the biggest private steel traders in the world, with twenty-eight companies located all over the globe and sales to over.
In addition, the Group allows Steelforce Packaging to count on a global footprint that no other player in the supply of metal-packaging raw materials can access.
The Padovani family has been involved with food and metal packaging for four generations so far. Through different eras of its history, the family went from an agency, through service centers, into trading, and finally into today’s “glocal” distribution business model.
The family makes sure Steelforce Packaging can count on technical and global sourcing understandings unequaled within the metal packaging supplies industry. Passionate expertise acquired through a multi-generational tradition in the adjacent food segments is reflected today in Steelforce Packaging’s ability to offer new products for any existing end-use.
Our story began in 2011 when Vittorio Padovani met his old friend Francis Alexander in Antwerp. Our two co-founders discussed what kind of opportunities they would have if they joined forces to give the metal-packaging industry an unprecedented combination of global products and local service. One with a whole life in the food and can-manufacturing industry, the other a visionary of global trading forged by its passion for all steel products. They agreed in the first meeting: this was going to be a success...
In 2012 they signed a Memorandum of Understanding as the first act of mutual commitment with common ground rules
2016
In 2016 warehouses were established in Antwerp, Ravenna, and Salerno
2017
In 2017 SteelFORCE Italy was incorporated in a joined venture, to better serve the Italian market with distribution and processing
2018
In 2018 SF Services was incorporated in Salerno (Italy) in a joint venture with the Ferrara family and warehouses were established in Spain and Bulgaria.
2019
In 2019 The American Metal-Packaging Company was incorporated in Medellin (Colombia) to serve the Latin American markets through multi-decade expertise acquired with the new local team
The same year, warehouses were established in Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Brazil
In 2019 the joined venture reached for the first time a net yearly invoiced tonnage of two hundred thousand tons, consolidating sales from Europe, Latam, and Africa
2020
At the end of 2020, SteelFORCE Group and the Padovani family decided to re-structure their joined business into a specialized metal-packaging group. The new entity was named Steelforce Packaging and it would involve all the metal-packaging units jointly developed so far.
2021
In 2021, Steelforce Packaging’s board decided to invest in a new service center in Barranquilla (Colombia). The aim was to reduce the lead time and increase quality control on the sales of lacquered and printed products in the Latin American region. The plant will be operational in 2023
2021
In January 2022, Steelforce Packaging decided to launch the development of a North American sales network, by replicating the successful business model already in place in Europe and Latam. Steelforce Packaging America inc. was incorporated later the same year
In April 2022, Steelforce Packaging Mexicana was incorporated to increase the level of service and commitment to the Mexican market through the difficulties of global logistics.
