Company

Yesterday

A lot of people living in Azzano San Paolo can remember the Chiesa Butchery, in the middle of the town, where the whole Chiesa family used to work. The son, Ezio Chiesa, used to work in the Chiesa butchery from his young age, and following his strong passion, and with the help of the wife and later of his own son Luca Chiesa, was able to take a small shop selling salami and other goods into a small factory with a big mission: produce their own line-up of pork products and sell it, to bring people the all good tastes the Bergamasca tradition could be proud of.

This was possible thanks to Chiesa family knowledge about meat as a raw material, the best cuts to use, the perfect mixtures of spices, and the severity needed to pick all the best ingredients. These fondamental elements, added to nowadays technology and with the necessary good manufacturing practices, makes what IBS is today.

 

Today

The Slaughterhouse

To improve raw material quality Chiesa Family built its own slaughterhouse in 1985 in Ardesio, located into the higher part of ValSeriana Valley, meeting the necessity of a continuous furniture of fresh, quality, pork meat, with the pureness of the mountain’s environment. The slaughterhouse was build meeting the modern laws and sanitary requirements, and taking particular care of the animal welfare, to provide no unnecessary suffering to animals, and at the same time getting the best meat, with no stress signal due to the slaughtering process. The mountain environment even adds a objective improvement into products seasoning, with perfect umidity and air quality, a clear true advantage IBS and Ca’ del Botto can relay on.

 

The new factory

To be able to expand the total volume of production, in 1995, the building of a new productive structure was needed. The area was found close to Azzano , the town where the old Chiesa’s commercial activity used to be, signing a continuity between the past and the future of the activity.

The new factory features the most modern technologies in production, drying and seasoning, and extends over an area of 10’500 square meters.

Modern technologies are in synergy with traditional recipies to create high end products, in complete respect of use of non-toxic only material, and of nowadays laws and regulations about health and safety.

 

Ham production in Ardesio

For more than 150 years, Bergamo’s families have found in the swine a source of meat, both consumed fresh after the slaughtering, and to create products that could be stocked: salamis, bacons, fats, and, for the more skilled butchers, hams. A true richness for the population. This was the idea moving Ezio Chiesa, taking small local traditions of the past and continuing it nowadays, to produce high quality products, following the culture of the place they belong to. This level of quality is possible only the pure, non-contaminated environment of the ValSeriana Valley, close to the Alps surrounding Bergamo, where the aromatic air from the mountains meet the more humid air from the Padan plains, generating the perfect environment for the seasoning of hams.

Ardesio, 600 meters on the sealevel, is a perfect place to produce hams, and this was clear to Ezio Chiesa. Ham production in Ardesio’s facility is now capable of producing 90’000 – 100’000 hams every years, and being right next to the slaughterhouse guarantees the best pork legs, fresh and with no shipment needed, avoiding all possible temperature or moving stresses. Ham production was the last step in closing the whole circle of production connected with meat production and the slaughtering process, opening new horizons to the IBS and its quality products, now available for Italian’s and World’s Markets