He passed away on 7 January 2026, just days before his 82nd birthday: the man who founded MCT Italy in 1967, an entrepreneur, innovator and Mayor of Bettona
With deep sorrow, MCT Italy announces the passing of its founder, Lamberto Marcantonini, who died on 7 January 2026 in Bettona, Umbria, just days before his 82nd birthday.
Lamberto was born in January 1944 in Bettona, into a family involved in the manufacture of concrete products. Technically minded and curious from an early age, in 1965 he joined Manini Prefabbricati as an employee, where he gained first-hand knowledge of concrete – not as an abstract material, but as a process shaped by mix proportions, timing and the quality of the finished product. It was an experience that would remain with him throughout his life. In 1966, he built the first semi-automatically controlled concrete batching plant for the production of precast prestressed joists; the following year, at just 21 years of age, he founded his own company specialising in the design and construction of concrete batching plants: MCT – Marcantonini Concrete Technology – was born.
For almost sixty years, the founding insight remained the same: start from the finished product and rethink the production process. Do not sell machines, but design systems. Do not follow standards, but build solutions tailored to every customer, every context and every production requirement. With this vision, Lamberto took the company into international markets – North America, Australia, Europe and the Middle East – while always keeping its headquarters in Bettona: never a random choice, but an act of faith in the local area and in Italian industrial culture. Today, nearly sixty years after that first plant, MCT Italy has completed installations in more than seventy countries.
Alongside his business activity, Lamberto maintained a deep commitment to public service: he served several terms as Mayor of Bettona (from 1974, and again in 2007 and 2016), was Vice President of the Umbria Export Consortium, President of the Banca di Credito Cooperativo di Bettona, and a member and Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of Umbra Acque from 2020 to 2025. In 2023, together with his friend Roberto Morroni, he founded the political and cultural association “L’Officina”. In 2024, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the ICTA – Italian Concrete Technology Awards, held as part of the GIC exhibition in Piacenza: recognition of a life devoted to innovation in the concrete industry.
When news of his passing spread, messages arrived from every continent: from the concrete industry, institutions in Umbria, customers and colleagues in Morocco, France, the United States, Canada and Australia, culminating in a gesture that deeply moved the company – a Palestinian customer lit a candle in his memory in the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem. This was no coincidence: Lamberto did not work for statistics; he worked for relationships. Every installation was, as he himself liked to say, a bond that forever connected a person to Bettona.
“Lamberto Marcantonini was an innovator for two fundamental reasons. The first concerns his professional journey, which began with the finished product and worked backwards to rethink processes and production systems. The second is human: he was a person of great kindness, capable of finding common ground and building a team,” recalls Manuel Boccolini, CEO of Manini Prefabbricati.
“A multitude of entrepreneurial initiatives made him a point of reference for all those who believed in technological research as a pillar of progress for companies and people,” recalls Enrico Dassori, President of Assobeton.
“To me, Lamberto was more than an industrial partner: he was a travelling companion with whom I shared and overcame extraordinary challenges. What I will always cherish is the profound humanity that grew out of more than thirty years of working side by side,” writes Claudio Failla, past President of CTE.
MCT Italy chose to remember him with these words: “Lamberto was a devoted father, a family man and a charismatic, visionary entrepreneur. From his beloved Bettona, he built a company that is now internationally recognised, showing how passion, determination and constant hard work can turn a vision into reality. We are honoured to continue along the path he laid out and to safeguard the legacy of his values with responsibility.”
To retrace his entire story — from his beginnings in Bettona to his industrial ventures around the world, and the tributes received from every continent — MCT Italy has compiled a Book of Memories dedicated to Lamberto Marcantonini, available for download via the link below.
