Against the splendid backdrop of Masseria Palesi, the company celebrated three decades of history by retracing its past while launching new challenges for the future. The guest of honor was Olympic champion Antonella Palmisano.
Last Saturday, September 19, the exclusive setting of Masseria Palesi in Martina Franca hosted the celebrations for Werent’s 30th anniversary. It was an exceptional evening, made unique and warm by the presence of numerous employees who gathered from all branches across the country, providing an opportunity to recall the most significant milestones in the company’s history.
This story began in 1996 in Martina Franca, driven by the intuition of entrepreneur Michele Marraffa. His idea was simple yet courageous, and completely bucked the trend of the time: to bring a service to Southern Italy that, until then, had been almost exclusively available in the North: aerial work platform rental.
This vision began taking shape under the Venpa Sud brand, starting with a single machine: an Iteco IG 8150. This 1,900 kg battery-powered scissor lift operated at a working height of nine and a half meters, carrying up to three people and 465 kilograms. That very machine became the symbol of a success story and an extraordinary journey. Starting from a provincial town, this sector-specific company grew over three decades to become one of the most prominent and established realities both in Italy and abroad. Today, it boasts 6 branches nationwide, a fleet of over 2,000 vehicles, and a flagship unit—the “Queen of the Air”—which has raised the bar from those initial nine and a half meters to an impressive 103 meters in height.
Over the years, Werent has played a leading role with its rental fleet in Italy’s most important construction sites, those marking the strategic development of the country.
Testifying to the bond between hard work, tenacity, and achieving the highest goals, the evening featured Antonella Palmisano, an excellence of the Apulian territory and the global sports scene, who won the Olympic gold medal in the 20 km race walk at Tokyo 2021. The track and field star drew a compelling parallel on stage between her sporting career and Werent’s corporate evolution, highlighting how the ability to keep one’s feet firmly on the ground while aiming for the top is the true secret of success: “Both of our stories prove that starting from a small town in the Apulian province, you can reach the roof of the world,” Palmisano emphasized. “To succeed, you need passion, tenacity, determination, and a daily spirit of sacrifice. The important thing is never to rule out any milestone and to keep aiming for the maximum, step by step.”
The company looks to the future while fully embracing an important generational handover. “Thirty years ago, nobody except my father,” emphasized Giovanni Marraffa, Commercial Manager of Werent, during his speech, “could have imagined that his miracle of business management would lead us from Martina Franca to become one of the leading rental companies in Italy. It was a vision that pushed us beyond any geographical and technical limits. We purchased increasingly higher and more complex platforms, opening branches further and further north. And that vision, born thirty years ago from a single man, is today a shared heritage among all our employees.“
“The future of Werent is inextricably linked to the word innovation,” then pointed out Pasquale Marraffa, Purchasing Manager of Werent. “We do not simply want to keep up with the times; we want to lead and anticipate our sector as true innovators. We will leverage artificial intelligence and new digital tools, not to replace the irreplaceable human value of our team, but to analyze concrete data, streamline bureaucracy, and offer customers an increasingly efficient rental and predictive maintenance service. The safety of our people and our machines will always remain at the core of our investments. To the strategic partners who accepted this wager, we relaunch the challenge: to continue growing together to build an unparalleled service worldwide.“
This growth has taken Werent from Apulia to operate throughout Europe, celebrating its 30th anniversary in this year, 2026, while maintaining the firm pillars that made it a leader, starting with safety and continuous training.
“The highest peak this company has been able to reach is not measured in meters, it is measured in values,” concluded Werent’s administrator and founder, Michele Marraffa. “Safety, sustainability, training, and, above all, people. Werent was born with a clear goal from day one: to bring people to working heights in total safety. This principle has guided our every choice over these thirty years, from investments in the most innovative vehicles to continuous staff training and customer assistance at every stage of the work. For us, growing has never meant just expanding the fleet, but above all building a culture of safety, reliability, and competence. Today, Werent is a recognized reality by all industry professionals, but we continue to work with the same spirit with which we started thirty years ago, with one certainty: no goal is unreachable if you truly want it.“
During the event, Werent presented a special recognition to current and former employees who, through their professionalism, helped write its history over these thirty years. A cohesive and united team that constitutes the true corporate added value, allowing the company to look toward future challenges with determination and confidence.