The story of Lo Conte Group starts at beginnings of the 1900s, thanks to a great idea of the forefather Antonio.
He was a dreamer, his mind went faster and farer. Always a step further, his bright inspirations seemed to be the results of amazing time travels.
He decided to write a entrepreneurial story, originating from the land he loved so much. It’s not a ordinary story, his and his family story.
Antonio he already imagined it, four generations long.And so, he opened a book, one of those finely bound books narrating of important happenings and he started painting its white pages.
Bring something new in Irpinia farms to make easier the field work, and the idea was a rudimentary threshing machine that separated wheat from straw, tow behing cows and activated by a internal combustion engine.
Antonio was so satisfied to decide to go on innovating the agricolture of that time. Antonio smiled writing his story; he believed to hear even sounds and voices. The same his son Giuseppe, that used to go with him in his transactions, sharing with him his project of innovation and his entrepreneurial mind. Giuseppe didnt’t lose the opportunity to invest his savings. He wanted to build, grow, starting from teaching of his father Antonio.
Along not paved roads in Irpinia, Giuseppe travelled by his small Apecar, and then by a van with a large trunk, ideal for trucking goods and people to markets in villages nearby.
Always with Giuseppe, two trusted companion: his wife Palmerina and his son Antonio, a child wearing shorts, that inherited from his grandfather his name and his curiosity. With a small Fiat truck, a “Tigrotto”, to give more courage to the company, Giuseppe turned the dime trucking everything the soil produced, for himself and for others. Here begins the lasting union between Lo Conte family and grain, their life’s passion. Do you remember Antonio? The child wearing shorts, that inherited from his grandfather his name and his curiosity? He loved to hear his father talking about grain, and he went with him along Irpinia’s and Samnium’s road, sitting on grain’s sacks, in the truck, smelling the wind, with his heart full of love and admiration for his father.
Like every good fairy tale, there's the bad man.
In Seventies, the young Antonio went with his father to the commodity exchange in Foggia, that was an exchange place and meeting place for important traders. In that place, an important grain businessman humiliated Giuseppe’s simplicity and honesty. A deep wound for the young Antonio. In that moment he decided he would redeem his father start a project that was so much ambitious that it seemed to be magic.
New investments, economics studies, the difficulties to study and continue working at the same time, his brother Michele's and his sister Maria's participation at the new adventure.
In few years, the Group became indisputed leader in minor cereals supply (barley and oat). All the rest, it’s recent history. The old Antonio continue smiling, he knows he wrote a beatiful story. The title? Lo Conte Group, four-generations entrepreneurs. Story of wheat, flour, magic. There is still no finale, it’s in hands of Lo Conte family’s youth.
