Founded in the aftermath of the First World War, in an extremely difficult phase for the Italian economy and society, SACMI initially concentrated on the mechanical repair of “locomotives, threshing machines, agricultural and wine-making machines”, expanding its business during the 1920s to other carpentry works and getting to produce, already in the mid 1930s, the first machines under its own brand (an automatic cleaning-sorting machine for oranges).

In the new SACMI headquarters in Viale De Amicis, the machines were started up in early January 1949. Between 1949 and 1951 the first complete prototype of a press for crown caps is made, while in the ceramic sector, in addition to the continuous press improvement, other machines for the complete control of the production cycle were built, such as drum mills, the first enamellers, deburring belts and moulds. A more rational arrangement and the addition of other equipment allowed SACMI to increase the skills already acquired in the development of ceramic presses, starting to apply the first concepts that would lead, in a few years, to their complete automation. 

As early as the 1950s, the two main lines of SACMI development began to emerge clearly, alongside the rising Italian industrial districts of ceramics and packaging. 

1989 was a key year for SACMI: at the end of a decade of continuous expansion on the domestic and foreign markets, the Cooperative opened its own Research Centre in Imola with physical and chemical laboratories, technological laboratories for packaging, experimental departments for testing prototypes and a specific pilot plant for ceramics. During the 1990s, the Centre's laboratories were the site of the creation of the CCM prototype (continuous compression moulding), an extremely innovative technology in the plastic caps sector that SACMI would have used as a model all over the world. Between the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, the establishment of new companies (SACMI Labelling, Filling) and the definitive consolidation of CCM technology marked the Group's entry into the beverage sector. With the acquisition of Sama, Laeis and Riedhammer, SACMI also grows in Sanitaryware and enters the business of Refractories and Tableware.

Thanks to its extensive know-how in machines and plants, SACMI had already developed the first line supervisor concept in the 1980s. For this reason, the company was particularly ready to intercept and relaunch the new opportunities of Industry 4.0. Developing, on the one hand, SACMI H.E.R.E. (Human Expertise for Reactive Engineering), the platform designed to implement services and solutions for monitoring, maintenance and predictive diagnostics. On the other hand, by putting in place a cultural and organisational transformation that has seen, among other things, the implementation of a new model of governance, the establishment of a new Customer Service Division, a decisive investment in Human Resources that also involves the creation of new research facilities, such as SACMI Innovation Lab. Also in recent years, then, strategic acquisitions continue, from Defranceschi (historical Italian protagonist in technologies for wine cellars) to Eurofilter (filtering and purification systems). Number one in the world in supplies for the ceramic industry, SACMI has recently launched Deep Digital on the market, the new frontier of digital ceramic decoration, which joins the new 4.0 management systems of production flows and warehouse.