History

IMI Fabi, , Industria Mineraria Italiana Fabi S.p.A. , the Fabi Corporation, was founded over 50 years ago in Northern Italy, in the midst of the Italian Alps. Initially, IMI Fabi focused on the grey talc deposits from their three underground talc mines located in Valmalenco, North of Sondrio. This mining operation with the processing plant at Torre St. Maria, North of Sondrio, supplied grey talc products to Italy and eventually to accounts in Europe.

But a lot has changed over the last 50 years.

In the early 90’s the demand grew for high brightness talc products which could not be supplied from Italy. IMI Fabi began to import talc from China and Australia to meet the growing demand in application areas such as automotive and appliance plastics.

In the late nineties, IMI Fabi partnered with ZEMEX Corporation in the USA and eventually purchased the two talc manufacturing plants in Benwood, West Virginia and Diana, New York. This gave IMI Fabi processing capabilities on two continents.

In Asia, IMI Fabi had long purchased Northern Chinese ore for export to their Italian plant and then to the new plants in America. To gain a stable and secure source in addition to the position in Australia, IMI Fabi built a partnership position with mining operations in China. In 2003, this cooperative position grew to construction of our first plant in Haicheng China and our partnership with AiHai Mining.