Comau
Comau is an industrial automation and robotics company headquartered in Grugliasco, on the outskirts of Turin. Founded in 1973 as a consortium of small workshops supplying FIAT, it designed the Robogate, an innovative industrial robotic system, and grew to operate in Europe, the Americas and Asia.[1] Since December 2024 the majority of the capital has belonged to the US fund One Equity Partners, with Stellantis as a minority partner.[2]
The origins: a machine tool consortium
The name is an acronym: COnsorzio MAcchine Utensili (Machine Tool Consortium). It was formed in 1973 by a number of small Turin companies that supplied machinery to the Fiat group.[1] According to an account by the magazine Industria Italiana, those who joined were engineers and companies from the city who had worked on the construction of the large car plant on the Volga in the Soviet Union.[3]
The ground had already been prepared. In 1972 Fiat had installed sixteen robots at the Mirafiori plant to complete the welding of the Fiat 132, the first step away from rigid Fordist methods towards flexible automation; in 1975 automation was extended to the assembly of mechanical parts onto the body, and in 1976 to joining the body with the mechanical components, before reaching Cassino, Rivalta and Termini Imerese.[4]
The Robogate and the robotized factory
The product that made Comau famous was the Robogate, a body assembly system based on spot welding of each component, carried out by robots coordinated by a computer. It debuted in 1978 at the Rivalta plant for the production of the Ritmo and was later adopted at Mirafiori and at Cassino.[5] With the Fiat Uno the system reached full maturity: a large part of the project's investment went into automating the factory, where dozens of robots handled assembly, welding and painting, and the same principle was also applied to the FIRE engine, produced from 1985 at the new Termoli 3 plant.[5]
In the following years the company developed the first hydraulic robot and, between 1984 and 1993, the first flexible manufacturing systems (FMS), high-speed machining processes and the first laser robot.[1]
International expansion
Between 1995 and 2005 Comau expanded into Europe, North and South America and Asia.[1] The decisive step was the acquisition, announced in April 1999, of Pico of Southfield, Michigan, a maker of automotive assembly plants founded in 1939 by the Wisne family: 4,700 employees and about 800 million dollars in sales, acquired for 630 million dollars in cash and debt. At the time Comau was 65 percent controlled by Fiat and had revenues of about one billion dollars; the merger of the two groups, one strong in the United States and Mexico, the other in Europe and Brazil, created one of the world's largest producers of automobile manufacturing systems.[6]
In 2016 Comau had about 9,000 employees, of whom 1,300 were at the Grugliasco headquarters, 15 plants and a presence in 17 countries, with revenues of 1.24 billion euros; the United States, China and Germany were its main markets.[3]
Exoskeletons and robots for schools
In the 2010s Comau sought markets beyond the assembly line. In November 2017 it presented e.DO, a small six-axis anthropomorphic robot with open-source hardware and software, designed for education and developed in Turin with the technical collaboration of Altran; the company described it as "a kind of Arduino for robotics".[7]
In October 2018, at the Grugliasco headquarters, MATE was presented, a wearable exoskeleton weighing about three kilograms with no batteries or motors, built together with Össur and IUVO, a biorobotics spin-off of the Sant'Anna School in Pisa, which through a system of springs reduces shoulder muscle strain in repetitive work by up to half.[8]
"We are particularly proud to have developed this wearable technological innovation. MATE was designed in close collaboration with operators within the plant to meet their specific work needs."
Leaving the automotive group
The spin-off of Comau had already been envisaged in the agreements that in January 2021 led to the merger between FCA and PSA and the creation of Stellantis. On 25 July 2024 Stellantis announced the sale of a majority stake to the fund One Equity Partners, with the confirmation of executive chairman Alessandro Nasi and chief executive Pietro Gorlier.[9] Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares explained the move as follows:[9]
"This transaction is intended to help Comau achieve its own autonomy and further strengthen its success for the benefit of all its stakeholders, particularly its employees and its customers."
The metalworkers' unions opposed the deal and asked the government to exercise its golden power, arguing that selling to a fund does not follow industrial logic; Samuele Lodi of Fiom-Cgil called for a meeting on the auto sector at the Prime Minister's Office.[10] After the government's authorization in October, through the exercise of the golden power and the imposition of conditions on keeping plants, research and expertise in Italy, the deal closed at the end of December 2024: One Equity Partners rose to 50.1 percent, while Stellantis retained 49.9 percent. Stellantis chairman John Elkann said he was convinced that Comau had the leadership, strategy and operational discipline needed to create long-term value.[2]
Comau today
At the time of the sale Comau had about 3,700 employees worldwide, of whom about 700 in Italy, and overall revenues of close to 1.1 billion euros, 187 million of which were generated by the Italian company in 2023.[2] The headquarters remain at via Rivalta 30 in Grugliasco, in the Metropolitan City of Turin.[1] In November 2025, according to the Corriere della Sera, picked up by Bloomberg, Stellantis was considering selling its remaining stake to One Equity Partners as well, something the contract allows it to do starting in 2027.[11]
Sources
- Comau
- Forbes Italia — 31 December 2024
- Industria Italiana
- MuseoTorino
- Stellantis Heritage Hub Italy — 18 April 2023
- Crain's Detroit Business — 5 April 1999
- Massa Critica — 14 November 2017
- Ermes Magazine — 17 October 2018
- ANSA — 25 July 2024
- il manifesto — 25 July 2024
- Private Equity Wire — 25 November 2025