Maccaferri in the UK and Ireland is an autonomous civil engineering, product manufacture and construction division of the privately-held Italian Maccaferri Group. The Group is a diverse €2.1 billion industrial conglomerate with interests from food to finance, power generation and construction. The company takes its name from an Italian apprentice ironworker in 1550 who was nicknamed ‘Maccaferri’ meaning ‘he who strikes iron’. This link to iron remains to this day as a raw material used in the civil engineering and construction division of the company.

In the UK and Ireland, Maccaferri is a global leader in the manufacture, design, supply and installation of retaining structures, erosion protection and slope reinforcement solutions for the civil engineering industry. Maccaferri is acknowledged as the global leader in the supply of ‘gabions’. These are the large, modular steel wire baskets filled with rocks which you see supporting motorway embankments or on rivers to guard against erosion.  Its customers range from the construction company, Carillion to the Environment Agency, the Eden Project and even the 2012 London Olympic Village.
 
The business has over 70 employees based at four offices from the headquarters in Oxford to Belfast, Dublin – and Perth. Maccaferri is responsible for transporting thousands of  tons of gabions each year that are distributed in flat packs for projects such as the extension of the runway at Edinburgh Airport and the new M606 motorway widening in Yorkshire. The company turned to Easynet Connect in 2002 to guide it through advances in technology and also to support critical business applications such as the SalesLogix CRM and Dimensions accounting systems. As a result, having the most reliable and highest speed connectivity was critical. At the Oxford HQ, Maccaferri chose to use Easynet Connect’s own SDSL service in the knowledge that it has total responsibility and control over it. Consequently, systems administrator, Chris Prevett knew that they would get a better service. For other locations where this was unavailable, such as Perth, Maccaferri chose a 2Mb ADSL service.

In 2006, following expansion of the business and opening of the new office in Dublin, the company realised that they needed a managed service. Following its standard business practice of a competitive tender with three vendors, Maccaferri selected Easynet Connect, as they were already using its reliable, high-speed connectivity and were very happy with the service.