The Italian succession wave: why 2025-2030 is the window for industrial M&A

There is a window opening in European industrial M&A. In my view it will narrow sharply by 2030. If you invest in European manufacturing, it is worth understanding what is happening in Northern Italy now.

The numbers behind the story

Italy is one of Europe's largest manufacturing economies. By manufacturing value added it is usually ranked second in the EU, after Germany.

Emilia-Romagna, the region running from Bologna through Modena to Parma, is the centre of Italy's packaging machinery industry. According to UCIMA, the Italian packaging machinery association, the sector's turnover passed EUR 10 billion in 2024, and almost 80% of it was exported. Emilia-Romagna has about a third of the sector's companies and over 60% of its turnover.

The best-known names are IMA, Coesia and Marchesini, all based around Bologna. All three are still family-controlled. IMA has had BC Partners as a minority shareholder since 2021.

UCIMA's survey covers more than 600 companies, and most are far smaller than these leaders. Many are family-owned, run by their founder, and facing the same question: who takes over?

That question is generational succession. In Italy it is called passaggio generazionale. I think it is one of the most important drivers of deal activity in the Italian mid-market, and many international investors underrate it.

Why this matters now

The AIDAF-UniCredit-Bocconi Observatory studies every Italian company with revenue above EUR 20 million. In its February 2026 report, 66% of these companies were family-controlled. On average, leadership passes when the senior generation is about 75. The authors expect that more than a third of family firms could face a generational handover in the next ten years.

These are not distressed assets. Many are profitable, export-led businesses with decades of process knowledge and strong positions in narrow niches. The problem is simple. The founder wants to step back, and there is no obvious successor.

Why the field of buyers is often thin:

Too small for large funds. Big buyout funds need bigger deals to move the needle. A company with a few million euros of EBITDA sits below their range.
Too specialised for generalist buyers. A firm that makes ultrasonic sealing units for flow-wrap machines does not attract broad-market acquirers.
Founders often do not want to sell to competitors. Many are deeply attached to their staff and their town. A sale to a larger rival can mean the plant closes, and many founders see that as a betrayal of what they built.
Cross-border buyers often do not see them. Many of these firms do little marketing abroad. Their accounts are filed in Italian, under Italian accounting standards. For most international investors they are hard to find.

The precedents are already there

This is not theory. Deals are happening, mostly without much noise.

In November 2025, Smart Capital, a holding company listed on Euronext Growth Milan, agreed through its subsidiary Smart4Mechanics to buy 48.9% of Officina Ci-Esse. Ci-Esse is a precision machining firm in Modena, founded in 1978. The deal valued it at about EUR 8.1 million. It is part of a plan to build a group of Italian mechanical engineering firms.
In 2019, DeA Capital's food-focused fund, Idea Taste of Italy, bought Turatti, a Veneto maker of machines that wash, cut and dry fruit and vegetables. Turatti had revenue of EUR 22 million in 2018, about 80% of it from outside Italy.
Gradiente SGR buys family-led businesses in the Italian lower mid-market, including niche manufacturers. In February 2026 it closed its third fund above its EUR 180 million target.

Foreign trade buyers are active too. In 2017, the German process engineering group GEA bought Pavan Group, a maker of pasta and snack lines near Padua with revenue of about EUR 155 million.

The Italian investors understand passaggio generazionale well. Their focus is mostly on building groups at home. In my view, few buyers are building cross-border platforms that link Italian engineering know-how to growth markets in Southeast Asia or Latin America.

That is the gap.

The structural view

The idea is not "buy cheap Italian companies because the founders are desperate". Most founders are not desperate. Their companies are profitable and can keep going for years. The point is narrower.

Some Italian mid-market industrials may be priced below their strategic value, because few buyers ever look at them.

A niche machinery company with only a handful of serious bidders tends to sell for less than the same business would in a wide, competitive process. Small-deal pricing in Southern Europe shows how low it can go. Dealsuite's survey of mid-market advisers put the average at 5.3x EBITDA in the first half of 2025, across a market where many deals were below EUR 5 million. Across the euro area, the Argos Index put the median for unlisted mid-market deals at 9.5x in early 2025.

Combine that business with others into a platform with a real presence in markets such as Southeast Asia, and it may interest a larger set of buyers. More buyers usually means firmer pricing. That is not guaranteed. It depends on execution, and the Argos data shows financial investors paid slightly more on average than trade buyers in early 2025.

The main source of value is not cost-cutting. It is widening the set of buyers who can see and understand the business.

Why 2025-2030 matters

Three forces make the timing important.

The demographic clock. Many founders who built their companies in the 1980s and 1990s are now in their 60s and 70s. Each year more of them will decide. Some will sell to competitors. Some will close. The strongest businesses are likely to find buyers first.
New packaging rules. The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (EU 2025/40) was adopted in December 2024 and came into force on 11 February 2025. Most of its rules apply from 12 August 2026. By 2030, all packaging placed on the EU market must be recyclable. Some items, such as tea and coffee bags and fruit stickers, must also be compostable. Packaging users will need to change materials and formats, and many will need new or adapted machines. That is likely to support demand for the very firms facing succession.
Production moving beyond China. I expect much of the next wave of food plants to be built outside China, with Southeast Asia a likely home. Those plants will need equipment. European machines are trusted but expensive for many local producers. I think there is room for European-standard food equipment built in the region, and Italian know-how is a natural place to start.

After 2030, many of today's founders will have handed over or sold, and the packaging investment cycle will be further along. The opportunity will not disappear, but it will be harder to find.

What this means for investors

If you are a family office, a new fund manager or a corporate development team looking at European industrials, my takeaway is this.

The companies exist. Many are not formally for sale. Finding them takes time, local relationships and people who work in Italian. It is hard to do from a desk in London or Zürich alone. It also takes a real understanding of what passaggio generazionale means to a founder who has spent forty years building a company.

For buyers who do the work, the approach is clear: find good businesses before they are widely marketed, build them into something larger across borders, and widen the set of future buyers. Any result depends on the entry price, on execution and on the market at the time of sale.

The window is open now. It will not stay open forever.

This article describes how the market is structured. It is not investment advice.