The Trajectory of Ice Cream and the Family Revolution
The trajectory of ice cream machines is driven by a relentless search for efficiency: from manual automation in the United States, through industrial scale and soft serve, to the mechanical sophistication of Italian gelato. In the early 20th century, American Emery Thompson revolutionized the sector by creating the motorized commercial batch freezer, defining the global standard for batch freezing. Later, in the 1920s and 1930s, continuous industrial freezing and popular soft serve machines emerged.
However, the true high-performance artisanal ice cream revolution has family roots. In 1954, Italian Domenico Arpino — whose son, Marino Arpino, would found Finamac in 1985 — brought his genius to life by creating a vertical cylinder ice cream freezer for his own shop. Thus was born one of the most innovative concepts in the market: a machine capable of producing batch ice cream and ice pops simultaneously in the same brine tank.
Pioneering Spirit and Exclusive Finamac Technology
This ingenuity culminated in Finamac's iconic MP16 and MP30 models, designed by Marino Arpino, with over 1,000 units sold starting in 1985. While the market offered heavy metal tanks with welds, hard-to-clean corners, and colossal fluid volumes of up to 500 liters, Finamac presented a disruptive solution: a compact tank made of reinforced fiberglass. Featuring rounded corners for flawless sanitation and superior thermal insulation, the optimized design reduced fluid needs to an incredible 30 liters.
The MP16 and MP30 combined batch freezers became the beating heart of ice cream parlors. Compact, requiring low investment, they allowed producers to make ice pops and scoop ice cream on the exact same machine. Their vertical cylinder with spiral scraper delivered ice cream with unmatched firmness and consistency, ready to serve instantly without requiring subsequent freezing.
With the launch of Finamac's horizontal cylinder batch freezers in 1992, the legendary MP16 and MP30 gradually made way for new technologies. However, their legacy lives on: to this day, anyone who owns one of these relics wouldn't trade it for any other.
