Few objects are more Italian than the Moka Express. Invented in 1933, the eight-sided aluminium coffee maker became a global symbol of Italian ingenuity: affordable, beautifully designed and practically timeless.
But inventing an extraordinary product and building an extraordinary international business are not necessarily the same thing.
In a recent Financial Times feature, Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli uses Bialetti to explore one of Italian capitalism’s most persistent contradictions: a remarkable ability to create internationally recognised brands, combined with a less remarkable ability to scale the companies behind them.
Despite its iconic product, Bialetti struggled with changing consumer habits, competition from capsule coffee systems and unsuccessful diversification. By the end of 2024, the company was carrying approximately €115 million in net debt.
In 2025, investment firm NUO, backed by international capital including Hong Kong’s Pao family, acquired control of the business. Its approach: financial restructuring, professional management and a renewed focus on coffee.
The company’s reported 2025 revenue reached €166 million, with sales of approximately 4.5 million Moka pots, more than half outside Italy.
The story goes well beyond coffee.
Italy’s industrial success was built on small and medium-sized companies, frequently family-controlled, combining exceptional technical expertise with entrepreneurial intuition. These businesses created global reputations in design, fashion, food and manufacturing.
Yet international growth increasingly demands different capabilities: access to capital, professional governance, global distribution and management structures that can operate independently of their founders.
Foreign investment can supply some of those missing ingredients. Whether it strengthens Italian industry in the long term depends on what happens to production, expertise, employment and decision-making.
Bialetti illustrates a dilemma facing many Italian companies: the product can be global even when the organisation behind it remains stubbornly local.
The question is no longer whether Italy can create something the world wants. That has been demonstrated repeatedly.
The question is whether Italian businesses can build the organisations needed to capture the value they create.
THE ITALIC TAKE
We Italians have an extraordinary talent for inventing things the world falls in love with. We are sometimes less enthusiastic about letting our companies grow beyond the family dining table.
Perhaps foreign capital isn’t the problem. Perhaps the problem is that we too often confuse preserving an Italian identity with preserving an Italian management structure.
And if a Hong Kong investor can make more money selling an Italian coffee pot than the Italians who invented it, the interesting question isn’t who bought Bialetti. It’s why we needed them.
ITALIC — Set in bold. From Italy without geography.