Franco Tosi (formerly known as Franco Tosi & C., now called Franco Tosi Meccanica) is an Italian engineering business currently concentrated on the production of turbines, boilers, heat exchangers and pumps. It is located in Legnano near Milan. The firm was created during the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century by the Italian engineer Franco Tosi (1858 – 1898).
History and products
Franco Tosi grew out of an engineering business called, originally, Cantoni Krumm & C., which Tosi himself joined as Technical Director in 1876. The firm had originated a couple of years earlier (1874) as a producer, primarily, of textile machinery, but under Tosi's leadership it rapidly reinvented itself as a producer of steam engines, which Tosi had developed for use as the power source for industrial looms. These formed the basis for the company's rapid growth in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. Tosi soon became a shareholder, and in 1881 the company also took his name. In 1894 he became the sole shareholder.[2][3]
Some time later in 1907, the business diversified into the production of diesel engines, which was then a rapidly growing market sector.