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Case Study

La Marzocco: Espresso perfection

By Benoit F. Leleux and Jan Van der Kaaij

28 pages

November 2024

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Reference: IMD-7-2603

In July 2024 Guido Preti, La Marzocco’s sustainability manager, was preparing his three-year plan to combine La Marzocco’s ESG program with that of its new owners, the De’Longhi Group. Since its inception in 1927, the company had relentlessly sought to produce the perfect espresso machine through exceptional craftmanship, user centric designs and technology innovation. The company had grown from an artisanal builder of high-end professional coffee machines to a global player selling over 40,000 espresso machines a year to both professionals and consumers around the globe. In December 2023, De’Longhi Group announced the establishment of a global hub for professional coffee machines that brought together La Marzocco and Eversys. One particularly tricky question was how to align La Marzocco’s famed ESG reporting and sustainability program with that of De’Longhi Group while maintaining its best-place-to-work culture.

Learning Objective

Designing an effective sustainability strategy
Conducting a double materiality assessment
Combining sustainability reporting programs post-merger

Keywords

Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Growth, Espresso, Quality Management, Barista, After-sale Services, Growth Management, Technology, Craft, Coffee, Merger Consolidation, Materiality Analysis, Double Materiality, Environmental Social and Governance, Fair Trade, Reporting, Strategy, Responsible Consumption, Responsible Production, Goal Partnerships

Settings

World/global
La Marzocco, Manufacturing, Machinery
2024

Type

Field Research

Available Languages

English

Related material

Teaching note, Video

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