3 Generations, 1 company: FOHAMA’s History

This story is narrated by three generations. The founders Fontán, Hartmann and Manfredi, their children and grandchildren. It was the year 1970 when the founding partners decided to transfer all the knowledge acquired in more than 30 years of experience in the activity, to a company of its own. Julio Manfredi was in charge of the production. Enrique Hartmann, of the technical and commercial subjects. Alfredo Fontán, of the administrative part and labor relations. The oldest of the company still remember them touring the factory. Hartmann, remebering every detail, Fontán talking to each worker and organizing the administration and Manfredi in overalls and teaching a new operator the care and skill required by the winding process. At the end of the eighties, Renata Marcchiori, the Administrative Manager who had accompanied them from the beginning, would join.

FOHAMA was created as a family business and although since 1970 it has quadrupled its installed capacity and its workers' plant, creating new administrative and managment areas, decisions remain in the hands of those who made it possible for a Capital Goods Industry to remain operative in Argentina, avoiding periods of low competitiveness and indiscriminate opening, hyperinflation and other ups and downs. "We continue and expand thanks to the trust of our customers. They know that FOHAMA is a guarantee of compliance. And we can achieve it from its foundation. FOHAMA invests in FOHAMA. In cutting-edge machinery, in training for our operators, and always within the manufacturing of electric transformers. We were able to accompany the international technological innovation and the development of the national productive network "reflect from the direction of FOHAMA.

FOHAMA started manufacturing transformers that required rural electrification, allowing the installation of the brand throughout the national territory. Years later they began to produce transformers for the oil industry, the big Industry, the mining and at the moment they also manufacture transformers for the wind and solar energy.

The three generations also represent different historical temporalities of Argentina, which do not follow one another in a linear and "overcoming" way, but rather combine and harmoniously coexist.

A first generation of children of immigrant workers, who learned the trade by practicing it and decided to play it and set up their own factory. Formed during the period of Industrialization by Substitution of Imports, they relied on the potential of the activity and made their electric transformers reach all the provinces of Argentina.

A second generation formed in public education and learned to love the national industry and advocate for its large-scale development, which managed to circumvent the various crises, diversifying its production, but retaining its specificity: the manufacture of electric transformers.

And a third generation that looks at 20 years from now and bets on the generation of renewable energy, because it understands that the sustainability of the energy industry in particular, as well as the production of goods and services from a more general perspective, requires a responsible use Of resources and the assumption of a long-term corporate social policy.

These three visions, experiences and skills give FOHAMA its own identity: being a large Argentinian electrical transformers industry that reaches every corner of the country, Latin America, Asia and North Africa, with transformers of excellence, devised and manufactured by Argentines.