Since 1953 Glassfer has been producing innovative and quality glass, proposing technological, functional and aesthetic solutions for every ambitious project.
Today, the experience gained over the years and continuous innovation have allowed Glassfer to become quality and customization synonymous in glass processing internationally.
Glassfer is not yet a company. Carlo Pina was born as a small local craftsman who worked with paintings frames and make small installations of windows and stained glass. His son, Sergio Pina, supported him by learning the glass making process.
During the Second World War Sergio Pina, while serving in the Italian army, was captured by the Germans who put him to forced labor in a military components factory. Here he was lucky enough to see and learn the first hardening processes to reinforce the glass elements of military vehicles.
Back in Italy, Sergio resumes his family business and creates a small hardening plant: the first in Italy. Thus began the first orders for the production of tempered glass for ovens, kitchen appliances, portholes and diving masks.
The business was very successful and in 1953 Sergio Pina founded Glassfer. The company specialized in the field of safety glass such as doors and windows.
For the kitchen oven market, the need arose to print information and icons on the surface to facilitate cooking food. Sergio Pina developed the technique of ceramic screen printing on tempered glass, a process that was made indelible and integral with the glass after the tempering process.
This screen printing technique was industrial implemented for the supply of all the glass of Stipel telephone booths nationwide and for the first screen-printed glass buildings. Technological development leads to the first double glazing, which greatly increase the thermal efficiency of the surface. Glassfer was a great supporter of this technique as the first company in Italy to manufacture insulating glass.
The vertical hardening technique was completely renewed and brought to the highest levels of productivity thanks to the introduction of horizontal hardening carried out by Sergio’s son, Carlo Pina.
Glassfer is ready to open up to the world through large internationally renowned projects such as the first suspended facades. One of the first projects that makes Glassfer known around the world is the inverse pyramid of the Louvre in Paris: for the occasion, the first large screen printing plant in Europe was built in the company.
Glassfer consolidated its position as an international excellence glassworks by continuing to innovate products and techniques: we introduced the first insulating glass units (with TPS technique) and the first hurricane-resistant laminated glass.
With the beginning of the new millennium, the first glass digital printing in Europe is installed in the company. Glassfer designs and manufactures a system that allows glass to be coupled with various materials such as natural fabrics, metal meshes, plastics, wood, marble: Glassfer innovates and also opens up to the world of interior design.
Glassfer opens up to the digital world by integrating the most innovative technology within its crystal: the first products that combine the transparency and resistance of glass with the infinite possibilities of digital.
Even today Glassfer continues to offer the innovation and flexibility that have always distinguished it.
The ability to work in parallel on both small artisan quantities and large architectural projects is what led Glassfer to build an international reputation as excellence in the bespoke glass transformation.
We have produced ever thinner and more resistant bulletproof glass, photovoltaic panels that disappear and integrate perfectly into the facade, increasingly advanced glass printing...We will never stop exploring to improve the quality of the space we live in.