The new furnace, called “furnace 83,” is the 12th for the Verallia Group in Italy and will give new impetus to the Tuscan plant in the province of Pistoia from 2024.
During the last Capital Market Day held in Paris on October 7, 2021, Verallia Group CEO Michel Giannuzzi announced the green light for the construction of a new furnace. The choice was made for the southernmost plant in Italy, one of six Italian plants of the group.
Marco Ravasi, CEO of Verallia Italia, said, “With this latest furnace, our Group has invested, in the Italian market alone, an amount exceeding EUR 300 million. As I have already said on the occasion of the lighting of the new furnace in the Borgo Mantovano plant, we believe we have the moral duty to support the industrial relaunch of the country, actively accompanying the relaunch of food and beverages made in Italy.
“For this reason we have chosen to invest on the Tuscan pole, to strengthen the presence in central Italy and be able to better serve the customers in the South of the country, where in recent months a storage warehouse started operations.
“The new furnace,” continued Ravasi, “will be characterized by the adoption of the best technologies, which will allow us to have greater production flexibility, being able to quickly change colour and format, and increasingly reduce emissions.”
This is the direction the company continues to follow on its ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance criteria) roadmap, summarized by the corporate purpose defined in 2020: “Rethinking glass to build a sustainable future.” The most challenging objective, considering the industrial size of the Group, is to reduce CO2 emissions by 46 percent by 2030 and to pursue carbon neutrality by 2050.
On the employment front, the company has carried out a hiring plan that in the last three years has increased the working force by 10 more employees. The important growth in female employment in a historically male industry, should also be emphasized: the number of women has doubled in the last four years, and some of them occupy important positions of responsibility.