At 70th anniversary celebration.

Smeg global CEO, Vittorio Bertazzoni was unable to attend the company’s 70th anniversary celebrations in Sydney but wrote a letter to express his gratitude and reflect on the significant milestone.

The letter was read out by Smeg Australia managing director, Jim Kalotheos at the anniversary function in Sydney last week.

“I would like to thank you very much for attending this event, celebrating Smeg’s 70th anniversary. Unfortunately, I cannot be with you today but only because of a very good reason. As some of you may know I just became father, for the second time, of a beautiful baby boy, Riccardo.

“70 years is undoubtedly a remarkable achievement of which my father Roberto and myself are very proud of. But first of all, we would like to thank all of you, our business partners, as without you, your trust in the brand and its products we wouldn’t be here today. And of course in this particular occasion we would like to thank our great team of Smeg Australia.

“For me personally, it has always been amazing to see the passion of our team here in Australia. And honestly it has always been very inspiring to feel this passion for our products in this country. Making people as far as 24 hours by plane, feel happier thanks to a (beautiful) appliance is actually very rewarding but you also feel some responsibility.

“I truly consider Smeg to be a family and as history often tells us the most far away son is the most loved one.

“I am often asked what’s next and how I see Smeg in the future. I was appointed CEO 11 years ago just before the global crisis of 2008/2009 hit the markets.

“In the past eight years we have doubled our sales as a group. We have gone from 7 to 20 subsidiaries; we have expanded the business into new fields such as SDA and foodservice.

“I think we have managed to be innovative, very innovative, if you think this is an Italian family business, staying at the same time loyal to our principles.

“I know every generation has its own challenges and we want to tackle them with the same optimistic spirit, the same approach of the very beginning. We want to deliver to our customers the most beautiful appliances, the most creative and innovative objects you can use at home.

“Architects, designers, artists, fashion masters and cutting edge technology together.

“Once again thank you for celebrating our 70th anniversary. This is our party, your party, our way to say thank you for the trust and thank you for the incredible support we have had in this great country.”