CAB contributed to the building of the space station where Samantha Cristoforetti operated.
With customers such as Alenia, Agusta Westland, Selex, Piaggio Aerospace and Superjet International, CAB Bertola is a consolidated reality in aeronautical supplies.
The company was established in 1987, when the father and uncle of Rudi Bertola (the current CEO), received the specific invitation from the Naval Workshops for particular workings. Bertola, who has lived in Mogliano for years, says: “The workshops were already customers of the previous company, founded in the 1960s, which dealt with aircraft maintenance equipment. We therefore decided to diversify and extend the type of business”.
At the beginning, explains the manager, the company had only one customer. A factor that risked compromising the future of the company: in 1992 it was decided to work no longer exclusively but to try to enlarge the customer portfolio. Today CAB makes 80% of its turnover in Italy and works for the most important companies in the aerospace sector, supplying some components designed for the space station where the Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti lives. A sector with little competition in Italy (in Veneto there is only one competitor), because, whereas mechanics is one of the strong points of the Italian economy, the aerospace niche market is hardly present.
A family-run company (all managers are descendants of the two brothers who founded the maintenance company in the 1960s), proud to be part of a market segment where maximum precision is required. As we know, the aeronautics and aerospace sectors do not admit errors, and being able to comply with the specifications of giants such as Airbus or Boeing is certainly a demonstration of competence and professionalism.
Since 2010, CAB has been carrying out the entire in-house production cycle to overcome the first signs of crisis of two years before, doubling the number of employees from 20 to 40 people.
Alessio Patron
Samantha Cristoforetti is an Italian European Space Agency astronaut, Italian Air Force pilot and engineer. She holds the records for longest single space flight by a woman (199 days 16 hours) and for the longest uninterrupted spaceflight of a European astronaut. She is also the first Italian woman in space.