August 30, 2026 13:09

Bruno Crocco has passed away at the age of 89. Together with his wife Luciana, he founded the company bearing his name in north-eastern Italy in 1967. Today, Crocco is one of Europe’s leading manufacturers of flexible packaging.

His entrepreneurial journey began in mechanical engineering and was driven by a curiosity about materials. After studying polymers through books and magazines and visiting industrial laboratories, he gained experience at Montedison in Padua and Ferrara, deepening his knowledge of polyethylene extrusion technologies.

His first workshop was in the garage of his home. According to an anecdote recalled by the company, when he installed his first extruder, he realised that the ceiling was not high enough and solved the problem by cutting a hole through it.

In the 1970s, Crocco helped develop new applications for plastic film in the beverage industry. His idea was to replace the traditional metal systems used to transport bottles with packs made from shrink film. Together with several machinery manufacturers, he developed and tested solutions for packaging bottles directly on production lines.
The first applications were tested at Vetrerie Italiane in Vicenza, Veneto. Those trials led to the development of systems that were subsequently installed at numerous plants across Italy and Europe.

Another significant step was the development of multilayer films to address problems related to palletisation. Coextrusion trials paved the way for new industrial applications.

Bruno Crocco also anticipated practices that would now be associated with the circular economy: in 1980, he founded T&T, a company dedicated to recovering production scrap and converting it into secondary raw material. The decision came at a time when terms such as circular economy and sustainability had not yet entered common industrial usage.

Over the years, this approach was further developed within the company through material recovery, waste reduction and research into solutions with a lower environmental impact.

The family remained at the heart of the company’s ownership and continuity over time, with successive generational transitions preserving its ties to its origins.

The Veneto entrepreneur always maintained a direct relationship with the people working in his companies. His recollections often mention the names of employees, technicians, salespeople, suppliers and customers who shared the different stages of the company’s growth with him.
It was not unusual for him to meet suppliers and customers personally. He considered listening and observation essential parts of the job. “There is a secret for those who, like me, love pioneering,” he wrote: the ability to listen, look deeply and observe carefully.

In 2017, looking back on fifty years in business, Bruno Crocco ended one of his accounts with a word that had accompanied many of his decisions: “Courage, a beautiful word.”

Headquartered in Cornedo Vicentino, in the province of Vicenza, Veneto, Crocco operates four production sites in Italy and a sales subsidiary in Germany.

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