For much of the last decade, the thermos manufacturer from Rio Grande do Sul, Termolar, lived on the edge. Pandemic, credit crisis, hacker attack, floods in the south of the country and debt that strangled cash put the company in permanent survival mode.
In charge of this process was Natalie Ardrizzo, who assumed executive leadership at the most turbulent time in the company’s recent history. “I consider myself a CEO of crises”, she states, bluntly.
Founded in 1958, Termolar, a national reference in thermal conservation, was born from the entrepreneurial vision of Natalia Ardrizzo’s father, a Uruguayan who arrived in Brazil at a young age and saw opportunity where few did: a bankrupt glass factory in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul.
Alongside a partner, also Uruguayan, he started the business focused on thermos bottles, personally designing the first products. “My father was a problem solver. He saw a pain like carrying chimarrão on a daily basis and thought about how to make people’s lives easier”, says Natalie.
The corporate turnaround took place decades later, in 2012, when the father bought the other partner’s stake and the Ardrizzo family fully took over the operation. “It was the company’s biggest milestone. From then on, it was no longer just a business. It was our family’s responsibility”, he says.
According to her, the succession was not accompanied by structure or preparation. “The company was not organized for succession. When we joined, it was based on courage, learning as we went”, recalls Natalie Ardrizzo, who participated in the program From Zero to Top and explained the company’s strategic turn.
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A company that “fell into their lap”
Natalie joined the family business in 2015, initially to take over the financial area. Ten months later, with her father’s death, she became a partner and began to share responsibility for a company with around 700 employees.
“In ten months, the company was mine. I needed to fight for myself, for my brothers and for hundreds of families who depended on it”, he says.
The scenario was not favorable. The company faced severe credit constraints and carried structural debt that limited any strategic movement. The most critical point came in 2022, when the emergency lines created during the pandemic were cut.
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“I entered a vicious cycle: the less I paid, the less credit I had. And the less credit, the more expensive the money became”, he says.
For years, the priority was keeping the operation alive. According to the CEO, this extreme focus on the short term had a silent cost. “We lived in today and the beginning of tomorrow. We could never get past that”, he says.
The turnaround began when the company managed to stabilize its operating results and began to discuss long-term strategic planning. Something rare in the company’s recent history. “Surviving is no longer enough”, he summarizes.
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The company now exports to more than 30 countries, has more than 700 employees and ended 2025 with revenues close to R$350 million. And this story was the theme of an episode of Do Zero ao Topo, which tells the stories and challenges of the men and women behind large companies in Brazil.
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To find out more details about Termolar’s trajectory and the changes that helped keep a years-old business alive, see the full episode on . The program is available in its podcast version on the main streaming platforms such as , , , and .
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About From Zero to Top
The Do Zero ao Topo podcast is a production of InfoMoney and brings, every week, the stories of prominent women and men in the Brazilian market to tell their story, sharing the biggest challenges faced along the way and the main strategies used in building the business.
