Grandimpianti Brand Guidelines: The Sospirolo Laundry-Machine Maker Inside Ali Group

A laundry-machine maker in the province of Belluno.

Grandimpianti makes washing machines, tumble dryers and ironers for professional laundries at Sospirolo, a small town in the province of Belluno in north-eastern Italy. The company dates its start to 1972 and frames its story as more than 50 years in the laundry trade — “professional fabric treatment since 1972,” in its own words. The cleaning-trade newsletter Cleanzine, reporting on a British distribution deal, gave the same year, saying the firm “has been in operation since 1972” and makes a full range of equipment for the washing, drying, ironing and general treatment of fabrics.

The full company name is Grandimpianti I.L.E. Ali, and the last word matters. In a release dated 10 March 2015, the foodservice-equipment group Ali Group described Grandimpianti ILE as “founded in 1972 and part of Ali Group since 1999.” The laundry maker’s website still links to the group from its footer and names the company as having a single shareholder, and Ali Group’s own website says the group counts more than 115 companies.

There is a naming trap here. Ali Group also owns a separate company called Grandimpianti, based at Cernusco sul Naviglio near Milan, which plans and installs turnkey kitchens for hotels, hospitals and caterers across Italy. That business is not the laundry maker. The laundry company is the one at Sospirolo, and Ali Group news items refer to it as “Grandimpianti I.L.E.” or file it under “Grandimpianti Laundry.”

On how its machines are made, the company says it works within a district known for precision mechanical work, handing the making of some components to specialised local firms while keeping research and development, design, assembly and quality control in its own hands.

Timers, controllers and a weighing system.

Grandimpianti tells its history through controls rather than cabinets. Its timeline lists a purpose-built electromechanical laundry timer in 1984, the introduction of skinplate in 1997, ironers with an anodised extruded-aluminium plate in 1998 and, in 1999, an electronic temperature-control board in its ironers, which it says it was first on the market to fit. Electronic control replaced the washer timer in 2001, and the keyboard-programmed G900 controller followed in 2002.

The feature the company returns to most often is DWS, its Dynamic Weighing System, launched in 2007 according to both the company and Cleanzine. Ali Group’s 2015 release described it working with the G4-Wiz controller to weigh each load and work out the water and detergent needed for it. The company dates what it calls the “drying diagram” to 2008 and the GUIDO, G4-Wiz and G-Wiz controls to 2012.

Then came Wavy, a touchscreen interface for programming and monitoring the machines. Cleanzine reported that the connected Wavy system was launched at the Texcare trade fair in Frankfurt in June 2016, and the company dates Wavy and its internet-connected machines to the same year. The range now runs from GWH high-spin washer-extractors and rigid GWM and GWN washers to Wavy and G-Wiz dryers, GI ironers and GC calenders, alongside My Clean Clean, a turnkey self-service laundry concept.

The customers it names are broad: restaurants, care homes, hotels, coin laundries, pharmaceutical plants, dairies, cruise ships, mining camps and offshore oil platforms. Ali Group’s 2015 release added cargo ships, spas and cheese makers, with markets across the EEC, Africa and the Middle East.

Commercial laundry equipment.

Commercial laundry equipment is sold to two quite different worlds. At one end are laundromats, hotels and restaurants, where a row of stainless-steel washer-extractors and tumble dryers sits in plain view of customers and staff; at the other are industrial laundries, closed factories that wash for hospitals, hotels, airlines, cruise ships and workwear services. Girbau, for example, divides its business into commercial, self-service and industrial laundries, while Kannegiesser lists healthcare, hospitality and workwear among the uses for its machines.

In the industrial plants the machines become a production line. Soiled linen is sorted, carried on overhead monorails, washed in tunnel washers that move batches from chamber to chamber, then fed into flatwork ironers and folders or, for garments, steamed in tunnel finishers. Kannegiesser presents its range in exactly these terms, as one system from sorting to stacking, and in 2022 added a camera-guided robot that feeds towels into a folding machine.

For smaller customers the brand lives on the machine itself: the stainless front, the porthole door and the control panel. Girbau, for one, also sells a remote monitoring system called Sapphire. Makers speak a shared language of capacity and of water, energy and chemical use, and name their certifications and sustainability programmes prominently; the claims behind them are the makers’ own.

Many of these names remain family firms rooted in particular towns. Girbau grew from a workshop in Vic, in Catalonia, and Kannegiesser from a shed near Vlotho, in East Westphalia; Kannegiesser’s partner Montanari is a family business in Modena, in northern Italy. Several now build close to their customers abroad, as Girbau did when it opened a plant in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in 2025. This guide sets out what can be checked about each maker — founding, ownership and where it builds — and marks clearly what rests on the company’s own word.

A touchscreen that a design jury noticed.

Grandimpianti’s clearest outside recognition is for design. The Red Dot award site lists the GWH Wavy professional washing machine as a winner, naming the maker as Grandimpianti I.L.E. – Ali S.p.A. of Sospirolo and the designer as Emo Design of Vittorio Veneto. Red Dot describes a 7-inch touchscreen built into the front of the machine, graphic icons that recall smartphone apps, menus that change with the user’s level — beginner, intermediate, specialist or technician — and control through the cloud. The jury’s statement noted that the screen’s slanted position makes it easier to read.

Ali Group announced that award on 13 April 2017 as a Red Dot Award: Product Design 2017, and said it was the company’s second: in 2013 its GD dryer had won for its soft, curving lines, its ergonomics and its intuitive controls. The company’s own timeline lists a Green Excellence Award alongside that 2013 Red Dot, and a Smart Label prize for Wavy in 2017.

Later Ali Group items show the brand leaning on connection and energy use. A May 2020 piece presented Wavy washers and dryers as a matched pair, with remote monitoring and dryers offered with electric, gas or steam heating. In June 2026 the group’s magazine Aliworld described a Dutch distributor, Laundry Total, selling “hybrid” Grandimpianti machines that use solar panels to warm the water in their boilers. In Britain, Cleanzine reported, the laundry supplier Alex Reid took on Grandimpianti washers, dryers and roller ironers.

The company shows its machines at trade fairs, among them Texcare in Frankfurt and Expodetergo International in Milan, whose 2026 edition it reviewed on its website.

For a design guide, Grandimpianti shows how a laundry-machine maker can build its identity around the control panel. Compare Renzacci, another Italian laundry-equipment maker, and IMESA. For this guide we use slate, a stainless grey and a cool mist with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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