Pisani’s former machinery sales manager, Derrick Fretwell, who Pisani made redundant earlier this year, is to take over the agency to sell Italian GMM saws in the UK from next year.

And another of the major stone machinery marques sold by Pisani, Marmomeccanica edge polishers, will now be sold by National Masonry in Co Durham, where Managing Director Andy Bell says he will be offering a minimum of £2,500 trade in on any used edge polisher in any condition for a new Marmomeccanica as well as hiring them out.

The new agents result from Pisani having decided to end all their exclusive agreements on machinery.

Pisani Director Nick Telfer told NSS that Pisani made a commercial decision early this year after it became apparent 2009 was going to be a difficult year to sell machinery.

They made their machinery sales manager, Derrick Fretwell, redundant. Very soon afterwards machinery salesman Arran Langford also left to join CNC workcentre company Intermac.

Derrick Fretwell has now established his own company, Roccia Machinery Ltd, with the backing of City Business Finance Directors Paul Coggins and Matthew Gilbert. Arran has left Intermac to work for his former Pisani manager’s new enterprise.

GMM expressed their concern to Pisani in the spring about the stone and machinery wholesaler’s representation of GMM, but Pisani said they were not prepared to invest in the resources necessary to sell machinery when nobody was buying it or competition for any sale going was so fierce that there was no profit to be made on the sale – especially when the currency exchange rate was still not favouring the pound.

In September there was more discussion between the two companies but Pisani’s position had not changed. “Commercially, as far as we are concerned, this is the right thing for us to do at this time and it’s also sensible to allow the machinery suppliers to re-assess their sales strategies,” says Nick Telfer.

Pisani have represented GMM since the company was started in 1993 by the partners who still run the business: Giovanni Lagostina, Luigi Guazzoni and Corrado Franzi.

Last year GMM bought Cemar, who make polishing machines, but Pisani did not include Cemar in their range because of their long-standing arrangement as agents for Marmomeccanica.

“The way it’s evolved has been honourable from all sides. We still believe in the brands and the machines. We have been representing GMM, Marmomeccanica and others for 15 years and more. The people there are our friends as well as our suppliers. Derrick is carrying on a profession he’s been involved in for 25 years. In that respect we wish him well.

“I think if we had said to GMM at the beginning of the year that we were going to withdraw from the machinery sales market they would have been very concerned about representation in the UK. As time has moved on they have got used to the idea and have been able to consider a new approach. It was quite easy to sit down and have a discussion with them.”

Pisani’s Stone Processing Supplies division will continue to operate with their three in-house engineers and sub-contractors as necessary. They will honour service agreements and continue to supply spares and consumables, as well as installing machinery for customers.

“All we are doing is exiting the existing exclusive agencies we’ve got,” says Nick. “There are hundreds of machines out there that we have sold and we have to keep them going for our customers. In any of this we wouldn’t want our customers to suffer.”

He says Pisani have 1,000 active customers buying stone on a day-to-day basis and machinery perhaps once every five or 10 years. “We are market leaders in the supply of marble, granite and limestone, but the machinery market isn’t viable at the moment and hasn’t been all this year.

“We will continue to assess the market and the pace at which the economy recovers.”