Cerutti's adventure started in Casale Monferrato, before the beginning of the 20th Century. The workshop of Giuseppe, father of Giovanni - Cerutti's founder - was the starting point of the Company. It was in the post second world war period that a big change occurred: Giovanni started repairing rotogravure presses instead of textile machines.
 
The first rotogravure press built for the Italian market was in 1949. In the same year, Luigi Cerutti, Giovanni's son, started the Company’s expansion into foreign markets. Giovanni Cerutti's death in 1972, two years after the inauguration of the new Vercelli plant, and that of Luigi Cerutti in 1973, left the company's development and growth under the direction of Tere Cerutti, Luigi's wife.  In 1981, Giancarlo Cerutti was appointed President and CEO of the Cerutti Group.

Being the leader in the rotogravure printing sector for the printing of magazines and packaging, in those years Cerutti started building also full color flexographic presses for newspaper printing. The next few years the Cerutti Group saw some enlargement, thanks to the acquisition of Flexotecnica - operating in the flexo C.I. packaging sector - and Iberica (Spain), Zerand and Bernal (USA) - specializing in the converting area. In 2003, the new Cerutti Research Centre opened in Vercelli, while a Software Design and Engineering Centre was activated in 2004 in Trivandrum (India).

In 2007 Cerutti purchased the German competitor KBA's rotogravure for publication division, remaining the worldwide leader in this market segment.