www.aromolio.it

This is not simply the long history of a family of first-class entrepreneurs. In part, it is also the history of Livorno [Leghorn]: of the cosmopolitan Livorno of the late 16th century, which was industrious with its own traders and proud of its own mercantile trade.  In the development and growth – not only economic but also cultural – of the city of Livorno, an important role was played – and continues to be played – by the more than one-hundred-year-old Enrico Fernandez Affricano enterprise. It is a part of that community of occidental Levantine Jews who benefited from the tolerant  policy inaugurated by Ferdinando I de’ Medici with the promulgation of the Livornina of 1593.
However,  the first information regarding the presence of the Fernandez Affricano family in Livorno dates to the beginning of the 18th century. Originating with all probability on the Iberian peninsula (specifically, Portugal), the Fernandes Africano family (a second f was added later, and in 1973 the final s was changed to a z) began to appear on the Register of Births with the four children born from the (1704) marriage of Daniel Fernandes Affricano and Rachel Rodriguez.
The DNA of the Fernandez Affricano family includes an almost inbuilt natural bent for business. Daniel was a shrewd leather merchant in Livorno (he was to enlarge his trade as far as Venice, Smyrna, and Alexandria in Egypt). His grandson, Gherson (translated in Italian as “Pellegrino”, i.e. Pilgrim), was reported in the census returns as a mediator, or as a mediator and broker. It was with Leone Enrico in 1863, however, that the family’s commercial business of worldwide prominence and fame got under way, and has continued down to the Livorno that we know today.
Endowed with great entrepreneurial qualities and a strong personality, in 1896 Leone Enrico founded a sole-proprietor firm of Commissions, Mercantile Agencies and Deposits: from the time that he was a very young man, he had accrued invaluable experience in the branches of  insurance and banking. Leone Enrico’s mercantile agency business was divided into various sectors – soaps, talcum powder, graphite and dyes, preparations for candles, waxes and paraffins, olive oils, and chemical products – while the firm was flanked in parallel manner by an insurance agency that numbered the famous Levant of Genoa and Lloyds of the Rhine and Westphalia among its clients. The success attained by Leone Enrico’s enterprise had international importance, and an advertisement for it even appeared in the commercial tourist Guide for the city of Tripoli in the early 20th century.
The family business continued to grow with Leone Enrico’s sons, Paolo and Fabrizio. It was Paolo who guided the oil-production sector towards new commercial circles: in 1927, together with Baron Ricasoli, he set up a refinery in Turkey; in 1925, he made his entrance in the Bertolli company, assuming responsibility for the oil-refining factory, ROL,  in Livorno. By then, the sectional vocation of the business seemed to be settled.
With the outbreak of World War II, the Fernandez Affricano family were obliged to move to Rome in order to flee racial persecution. Once the war ended, however, it resumed its oil-producing and insurance activities in Livorno with renewed energy. Moreover, the trademark was the protagonist of Livorno’s economic and cultural rebirth, with Paolo acting as President of the CEL (comitato Estate Livorense, the committee for Livorno’s summer programme) for 20 years and being actively involved in the building of the “Fanale” [Lantern] of Livorno, the symbol of the city’s rebirth. In 1950 the same Paolo created DOC SpA, a coastal deposit realised in collaboration with the Neri family.
A new company, Intramark, was also realised that made itself a leader in the importing and exporting of vegetal oils and became the Fernandez Affricano family’s principal sector of interest.
Still today, this sector enjoys excellent health and esteem at an international level with Enrico, Paolo’s son and Leone’s grandson, at the helm of an enterprise that is as solid as it is long-lived: in 1996, it celebrated its first 100 years of working life on the Italian and worldwide markets, under the banner of its great tradition and continuous spirit of modernisation.
At present, the firm is run by Enrico (appointed French Consul in 1995, he was decorated by President Chirac in 2004 as a “Chevalier du Mérite”), with the assistance of his daughters Letizia and Elena. The Intramark company packages olive oils in accordance with modern and technologically avant-garde criteria, while the Aromolio and Le Piagge trademarks guarantee the more than one hundred-year-old Fernandez Affricano enterprise the trust of its clients who are scattered all over the world. This trust is, and has been, a synonym for professional competence and for quality, generation after generation.