Zapi SpA

Zapi SpA

Zapi SpA traces its origins to 1975, when Giannino Zanichelli started designing electronic motor controllers in Poviglio, Emilia-Romagna. The firm grew quietly through decades of demand from the electric forklift and materials-handling sectors, building an engineering-led culture rooted in northern Italy's industrial machinery corridor. Zapi does not operate as a traditional family office or external fund manager — it remains an operating company that reinvests manufacturing profits into its own product lines and global production footprint. The company designs, manufactures, and distributes inverters, traction controllers, battery chargers, and onboard electronics for electric and hybrid industrial vehicles. Its components sit inside forklifts, aerial work platforms, airport ground-support equipment, and electric construction machinery. Key relationships span the global materials-handling sector, with Zapi controllers integrated by major original equipment manufacturers in Europe, the United States, and China. The firm's product catalog covers AC and DC motor controllers, CAN-bus-compatible modules, display units, and lithium-ion battery-management systems. Headquartered in Poviglio, Zapi maintains manufacturing and engineering facilities across Italy, with additional production sites in China and sales and support offices in North America, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Japan. The broader Zapi Group includes associated brands such as Inmotion Technologies (Sweden), Delta-Q Technologies (Canada), and Best Motor (Italy), each specializing in complementary vehicle-electrification subsystems. The group's structure makes it a vertically integrated supplier capable of delivering complete electrification packages rather than single components. Zapi's structural differentiator is that it is not a financial sponsor — it is an industrially owned, founder-rooted manufacturer that has consolidated adjacent firms under a single engineering group. This architecture allows it to serve as a linchpin supplier to an entire sector without answering to limited-partner timelines.