To tell the story of more than 20 years of the TREFITA group, we must go back even further in time, to 1948, and in space, traveling to the other side of the Atlantic, to Italy.

It was from this country, then destroyed by the Second World War, that the Iovino family left for Brazil, where Salvatore Iovino arrived in 1953. As a teenager, he worked in a furniture store, then in a law office. Salvatore took his first steps in the steel industry when he was hired to work in the technical treatment area of a steel company. In 1963, already holding an accounting diploma, he joined friends in a series of ventures in search of his own business, among them an auto parts distribution company, a law and accounting office, and a pharmaceutical laboratory. Salvatore Iovino already had different professional experiences and an entrepreneurial spirit when he met the woman with whom he would build a life and business partnership, Sonia Torres Iovino, whom he married in 1972.