Fraste Brand Guidelines: The Nogara Drilling-Rig Maker Named for Two Families

A forge, a workshop and a joined-up name.

Fraste began in 1964, when Benito Fracca opened a mechanical workshop in the province of Verona. In a July 2017 profile, the Canadian trade magazine Piling Canada traced the business to his family’s forge at Maccacari, near Verona, where they made hard goods for the village, and reported that he joined forces with the Stefanini family: the name Fraste blends the two family names. According to the magazine, the workshop first built small agricultural machines with hydraulic operation.

The company’s own history says its first drilling rig followed soon after the founding, and that this began its work in drilling. At the time, it says, drilling rigs were still largely driven by mechanical transmissions, and it describes itself as one of the pioneers of applying hydraulics to drilling rigs. Benito Fracca is still named on the company website as its founder and president.

In 1967 the company built its first new factory at Nogara, near Verona, and Nogara has remained its home. The site was enlarged in 1978, when, the company says, it began to show at trade fairs in Italy, laying the ground for exports. Between 1979 and 1984 it won its first international tender, for thirteen water-well drilling rigs for Bangladesh, according to its history.

Water wells, foundations and exploration.

Fraste builds hydraulic drilling rigs for several kinds of work. Its website lists rigs for water wells, subsoil investigation, foundations, geothermal drilling, seismic work, civil engineering and mineral exploration, with customised versions on request, and describes a modular design that takes a wide range of components and accessories.

The ranges arrived in stages, according to the company. In 1985 it launched a line of small rigs for geotechnical and investigation work that grew into the Multidrill series. In 1990 it set up a network of foreign dealers and distributors. In 1992 it built its first automatic rod-loading system, the “Manipolatore,” mounted on a crawler FS 300 rig. In 2004, its fortieth year, it moved into a new headquarters and launched the MITO series of foundation rigs. Between 2004 and 2008 came its first rig with a double rotary head and a new line of multipurpose rigs for mineral exploration; a second production plant followed in 2008. More recent milestones on its timeline include sonic rigs in 2018 and the FS 400 and MX 250 in 2021.

Piling Canada’s 2017 profile described the MITO series as rigs for micro-piles, tieback anchors, jet grouting, soil nailing and consolidation work, ranging from about four to 23 tonnes, and reported that Fraste was entering the Canadian market through MARL Technologies of Edmonton. The magazine said a 23-tonne MITO 100 was then in development.

Rigs for anchors, piles and boreholes.

Piling and foundation rig makers sell machines that do most of their work out of sight, below ground, so their pictures tend to show what stands above it. The common image is a tall mast rising over a building site, often framed against a city skyline or a half-finished bridge, with the rig itself on crawler tracks in mud, gravel or sand. The height of the mast gives the photograph its shape, and the model code painted on it is often the largest lettering in the frame.

A second set of images is about tools. Augers, drilling buckets, casings, grabs and cutter wheels are laid out in rows or shown close up, clean and freshly painted, so that the parts that will disappear into the ground can be seen at all. Vibratory hammers, clamps and power packs are photographed the same way, as objects on their own, before they are lifted by a crane.

Trade fairs matter in this category. The bauma show in Munich is where makers stage large stands, with rigs raised to full height under the hall roof or on the open-air grounds, and where new models, electric versions and anniversaries are announced. Stand design, banners and the colour of the machines themselves are part of how a maker is recognised there.

Many of these companies also carry a family or founder’s name, or grew out of a contractor’s own workshop, and their histories are told through dates, places and model numbers rather than slogans. For this series we look at how each maker presents that history, using an unofficial palette and a stand-in typeface, and reproducing no machine, logo or nameplate.

Still at Nogara after six decades.

Fraste trades as Fraste Spa and is based in the industrial zone of Nogara. The company says its plants cover about 14,000 square metres on a site of about 38,000 square metres that includes areas for test drilling and demonstrations, and that its staff numbers about 80; Piling Canada gave the same plant size in 2017. The company describes the Nogara buildings as its production plants.

The company lists ISO 9001:2015 and the American Petroleum Institute’s API Spec Q1 among its certifications, and names memberships of trade bodies including the Deep Foundations Institute, the ADSC, the National Ground Water Association and the PDAC, the Canadian mining association. Its news pages give a sense of how it presents the rigs at work. A July 2025 report describes a crawler-mounted Multidrill XL 140, delivered in 2021, drilling a 150-metre hole to install an inclinometer for monitoring the slopes of an open-pit iron mine in Minas Gerais, Brazil, and calls the model the best-selling rig in its range; the work was credited to its Brazilian dealer. Another release introduces the FRP Presenter, a trailer-mounted magazine that loads drill rods and casing up to six metres long into the rig and is powered from the rig’s own hydraulics.

Abroad, it sells through a network of dealers. In 2011 it founded Fraste Drilling Rigs Australia, its Australian base, and says the Australian market took a large share of its multipurpose exploration rigs. In 2012 it began a new programme to train its foreign representatives on its rigs and on the company itself.

The company marked its 50th anniversary in 2014 and its 60th in 2024 with events at Nogara, according to its website, which closes its timeline with the line that Fraste is still based in Nogara, “proud of its origins.” Its news pages list trade-fair appearances such as GEOFLUID and The Mining Show for 2026.

For a design guide, Fraste shows how a family workshop can turn its founders’ surnames into a single, short trade name and keep it on the machines for six decades. Compare Comacchio, another Italian maker of drilling rigs, and Soilmec, an Italian maker of foundation rigs. For this guide we use forge iron, terracotta and a well-water blue with a slab serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Fraste’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.