The origins of Farid are closely linked to Orecchia & Scavarda S.pA., a time-honoured Fiat and Iveco commercial vehicle dealership based in Turin, Italy. With its vast experience of commercial vehicles, in 1963, the company set up Orecchia & Co, which started out constructing box vans, refrigerated trucks and dump trucks for the building and construction industry.
At the beginning of the 1970's, a body builder called Farid was acquired. After starting out as a general company manufacturing vehicle bodies, trailers and transporters, in the mid 1980's it began specialising in waste collection vehicles for the European waste management industry. At that time, the Italian market for solid waste collection and disposal was highly fragmented, unlike in the rest of Europe and the company needed to develop rapidly in order to reach a critical mass which would enable it to implement a more global and international approach.
This began to happen in 1994, with the launch of a consolidation strategy, which involved acquisitions of other companies in the waste management sector.
The expansion into the complementary sector of liquid wastes, which began with Moro Teveico S.p.A in 1998, was completed in 2005 with the purchase of Allestimenti Pompe Moro S.p.A. The Farid European Group became a large Italian industrial group specialising in the production of dry waste and liquid waste management vehicles, able to fulfill all requirements of Local Authority Municipalities, Private Contractors and Hire Companies. The entire range of tanker equipment was completely renewed with the launch of the new Elegance and Tornado lines. However, the growing commitment to its core business - the production of refuse collection vehicles - and the challenges facing one of Europe’s major players in the waste sector led FARID to refocus its strategic vision, and the Tanker division was sold in May 2014. In July 2019, with a view to expanding both products and market share, Zőller-Kipper GmbH acquired 60 percent of the Farid European Group. The founding families of Farid continue to hold stakes in the company and Farid business continues on as before.
With turnover exceeding €140m and employing over 500 people, Farid European Group manufacturing and assembly is based in two plants in Italy (Besana and Vinovo) and one in the UK (Hillend, Scotland). Other subsidiary facilities can be found in South America and the Middle East, thus giving Farid a truly global presence in the 21st Century. The ZOELLER Group, one of the leading suppliers of lift systems and waste collection vehicles in Europe, currently employs 1,700 employees in six countries and generated annual turnover of EUR 270 million in 2018. ZOELLER is part of KIRCHHOFF Ecotec, the environmental division of the KIRCHHOFF Group, which achieved with 13,000 employees an annual turnover of EUR 2.15 billion in 2018.