In Orzinuovi an abandoned nightclub has become a factory in nine months

26 September 2026, 18:23

Orzinuovi, in the Bassa, the lowland plain south of Brescia, Monday 14 September. On the site of the Kalua, a nightclub closed and abandoned for years, AB21 opens: a plant of 16,500 square metres. From the laying of the first stone to the ribbon-cutting, nine months went by. Around a hundred people will work there.

It was built by AB, a company born in Orzinuovi. In 1981 Angelo Baronchelli, aged 21 and the son of local farmers, started out installing electrical systems for cowsheds. Today AB builds cogeneration plants, that is, machines that produce electricity and heat together. And in the United States it has signed a contract worth over €200 million to power artificial intelligence data centres in Texas and Wyoming, with the plants to be built in Orzinuovi.

The reason, as given in the reports on the opening, is this: “to support the company's growth and expand industrial capacity to meet market demand”. In plain terms: the orders are there, and square metres are needed to fulfil them.

Three details, set out in a row. The site was already built on: to make room for the factory nobody lost a field; a ruin was cleared away. The timing: nine months, from first stone to ribbon. And those hundred or so jobs are in the town where the company was born forty-five years ago.

For anyone running a business the lesson is simple. When orders exceed what the departments can produce, the first question is not where to build, but what already exists, empty, a few kilometres away. A disused industrial building, a closed warehouse, even a nightclub: the missing capacity is sometimes already there, just waiting for someone to make a quick decision.

The Kalua got the Bassa dancing on Saturday nights. AB21 gets it working from Monday morning.

This article was prompted by a news item published in QuiBrescia.