BFT Brand Guidelines: The Gate and Barrier Maker of Thiene and Schio, Part of Somfy Since 2004

From a gear workshop to gate operators.

BFT dates itself to 1981, when, its website says, the company was founded in Thiene, in the province of Vicenza. The trade magazine Door Industry Journal, reporting in May 2024, and the Swindon newspaper This Is Wiltshire both give the same year for the brand’s founding in Italy.

The company traces its roots further back. Its Italian company profile, published in 2022, says the story began with Francesco Bonollo, an inventor who in the 1960s built a mechanical business making gears, and whose first company was founded in 1967; over time, it says, a new ownership structure moved the business from a family hierarchy to an organisation fit for more competitive markets.

The company’s timeline shows how quickly gates became the core. It lists the E5, a compact operator with an articulated arm, in 1982; the LEM sliding-gate operator in 1984; the FL50 photocell in 1989, which it describes as the first to use a Fresnel lens; and the SUB, a monoblock hydraulic operator set into the ground, in 1992. Its first automatic door, the MOOVI, followed in 1994. In 1996 the company moved to new premises in Schio, where it is still based, and in 2001 it carried out the first large extension of its warehouse there.

Somfy, Sacs and O&O.

The decisive change came in 2004, when BFT joined the Somfy group, the French maker of motors and controls for blinds, shutters and gates. Door Industry Journal reported in 2024 that BFT joined Somfy in the same year it opened its first British branch, in the north of England. The company says joining Somfy gave it the push to build a structured distribution network, marking its passage “from family-run business to small multinational,” and that its early growth abroad came partly through buying its strongest customers in each market.

Two acquisitions took BFT beyond gates. In 2006 it bought Sacs, a specialist in parking systems, and in 2008 O&O, which its profile describes as a long-established firm from Emilia specialising in barriers and bollards. The company says those purchases closed the first great phase of its development.

Electronics grew alongside the mechanics. The company’s timeline lists the PROTON of 1997, its first electromechanical motor and the forerunner of the Phobos series; a rolling-code system for remote controls in 1999; and, in 2000, a control unit with fully digital adjustment on an LCD screen, which it calls the first display built into its automation systems. In 2006 came FASTNET, a wiring system that links every device to the control unit with only two cables, and in 2011 U-LINK, a wireless platform for maintaining installations, and U-SDK, a software kit that lets building management systems from other makers control BFT automation, the company says.

The car park became a major line. BFT’s timeline lists AURA NEA, a number-plate reading system for car park entries and exits, in 2008; AURA TUVA, which reads tags on windscreens, in 2012; and new drives for its Maxima Ultra road barriers in 2013. In 2014, it says, its X-PASS B 330/1200 bollard received certification to IWA14-1:2013. Its product range today runs from swing and sliding gate operators and garage-door motors to road barriers, traffic bollards, access control and parking systems.

BFT has organised itself around those markets. Its company profile describes two business units: Residential & Industrial, for access automation at homes and businesses, and Commercial & Urban, for barriers, bollards, automatic doors, access control and parking in places with heavy traffic of people and vehicles. Its website now groups the same work as Home Access Automation, Building Access Automation and Urban Access Automation.

Barriers, columns and gates.

Most people meet parking and gate automation only at its edges: the striped barrier arm that lifts at a car park entry, the ticket column beside it, the pay station near the lift lobby and, more and more often, a camera that reads the number plate so that no ticket is issued at all. The companies in this series make those machines and the software that runs them, and their brands have to work on a steel cabinet standing in the rain as well as on a phone screen.

The series covers two neighbouring kinds of maker. Car park specialists sell access and revenue control systems to airports, shopping centres, hospitals, stadiums and city operators. Gate and door automation makers sell motors, control boards and remote openers for sliding and swing gates, garage doors and road barriers, equipment that installers fit, set up and service on site.

The settings these makers show are practical ones: a barrier at a busy entry lane, a pay station in a lit garage, a sliding gate in front of a villa, a training room where installers learn a control board.

Trade fairs give the industry its calendar. Intertraffic, held at the RAI in Amsterdam, is a large trade show for mobility and traffic technology, and runs its own awards for product innovation; R+T, a trade fair run by Messe Stuttgart, is another date in the calendar. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it and what it says about its products — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Installers first, from Schio.

BFT presents itself above all to the trade. Its website says the company was founded with the aim of “being available to our customers at all times,” oriented towards the people who install its products, and that this spirit won it the loyalty of installers early on. It runs the Bft Training Academy, and in Britain, Door Industry Journal reported in May 2024, it had more than 35 staff and two distribution centres with training facilities, in Stockport and Swindon, where installers of all levels learn to fit its products. That year’s British open day was used to launch a new generation of products that the company said were designed exclusively by BFT.

Today BFT is still based in Schio and remains part of the Somfy group. Its website says it works through more than 530 distributors in over 120 countries, with its international network split between its own branches and direct distributors, and that it is one of the major players in home and building access automation.

For a design guide, BFT shows how a maker can carry one name from a garden gate to a city car park, speaking first to the installer. Compare Nice, a gate-automation company from the neighbouring province of Treviso, and FAAC of Bologna. For this guide we use a brick red, an iron black and a warm concrete with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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