At the end of the 19th century, the production system of the metallurgical industry had the following configuration: at the apex were the large forges that, having definitively abandoned the production of cast iron for the cheaper reuse of scrap, the ingots were prepared for the wire mills (about 2000 tons of material in 1872, plus another 800 tons coming from northern Italy and England). Over 80% of the ingots were converted into rods in the Badoni rolling mill at Castello and, after 1873, also in the Malavedo rolling mill.

The rolling mill "Giuseppe Badoni & Comp.", founded in 1850 in a partnership of the Badoni family of Lecco and Giorgio Enrico Falck, was the only "major company" in the area; it fit into the specific economic system without upsetting it, providing a dialectical relationship with the other small and medium enterprises.

The spread of puddler and souder furnaces, the introduction of peat as a fuel in place of coal, the spread of mechanical processes in many stages of production, were only a few of the most significant innovations that were introduced by this family of industrialists from Lecco in their plants; they deserve the credit, above all, for stimulating the entire industrial context of the area with great energy, imposing a definite process of modernisation of operating procedures and opening their doors to collaboration among the many operators in the metallurgical field.

In 1873 the corporation Laminatoio in Malavedo was founded by Giorgio Enrico Falck and two families of wire manufacturers, Bolis and Redaelli. The company was characterised by a so-called "tripod" model of production: the initial stage of the production process, that is the first hot processes, were common to all the products; for the rest of the processes the co-owners were allowed the maximum freedom to use the material available for any commercial or industrial uses. Of the 1,500 tons a year of rolled rod, 400 were purchased and processed in the Redaelli plant, another "historical" family of Lecco's metallurgical industry that progressively came to polarise around its activity all the minor trades in the Sassina valley, organising a modern sales network for it on the national level.

In 1896, with the founding of the Società Anonima Ferriere del Caleotto, another of Falck's ideas became a concrete reality: he wanted to eliminate the fragmentation and individualism of the industry and establish the first Italian plant specialized in the production of wire rod; the three initial founders (Francesco Airoldi, Enrico Bonaiti and Giacomo Gerosa) soon grew to over twenty partners, all wire manufacturers who were aware of the concrete potential for producing the raw materials they needed in their industries on their own, without having to import them from abroad.