History

The story of A.D. Compound is rooted in a family tradition spanning over sixty years, where innovation, chemistry, and industrial vision intertwine. In the 1950s, in Busto Arsizio, Mario Mercandalli began a business focused on the recovery of textile and plastic waste. Together with his son Giancarlo, the company expanded into paper and cardboard recovery — but plastics marked the turning point: the collaboration with Tommaso Perotti Nigra, a chemist from Montecatini-Montedison, opened the path to polymer research — the same field that led Giulio Natta to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In the 1970s, washing, densification, and extrusion plants were introduced, and the company specialized in industrial plastic recycling. In the late 1980s, with the arrival of Andrea and Davide Mercandalli, began the phase dedicated to the compounding of recycled polypropylene. In 1991, A.D. Compound S.r.l. was officially founded in Legnano, later relocated to Galliate in 2003 and transformed into a joint-stock company (S.p.A.) in 2005. Since 2010, the research laboratory has become the beating heart of corporate innovation.