Italcer Group wins Sustainability Award 2024
Italcer, a benefit company and design hub in the Italian ceramic industry, gained first place in the environmental category at the 2024 Sustainability Awards. This prestigious recognition, now in its fourth edition, honours Italian companies that have successfully addressed climate challenges, turning them into opportunities for innovation and for harnessing the country’s resources.
Italy has seen a surge in environmental investments in recent years, with over 300,000 companies in the industrial and service sectors committing to sustainability and efficiency initiatives, particularly energy efficiency and renewable energy sources.
This year, Italcer has topped the rankings of sustainable companies drawn up by Kon Group and the Euronext Group’s ELITE network in partnership with Milan Polytechnic. All ranked companies receive an ESG score from ALTIS Advisory, a spin-off of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, with RepRisk serving as the technical partner.
Italcer secured the top spot in the “TOP 100 ENVIRONMENTAL>250” rankings, earning the highest environmental score among companies with revenues exceeding €250 million.
Graziano Verdi, CEO of Italcer Group, commented: “This award underscores the importance of conducting research and development projects and, crucially, implementing them on an industrial scale to meet the CO2 reduction targets set out in the 2030 Agenda. Our commitment to sustainability also extends to our value chain and the communities where we operate. It is a challenging journey that demands a forward-looking strategic vision, yet it is highly motivating, as it enables us to respond responsibly to the needs of the market and the communities we serve.”
As part of its longstanding commitment to decarbonising its production processes, the Italcer Group recently introduced an electric kiln in Spain. This innovation, developed by Equipe Cerámicas in collaboration with Jaume I University of Castellón and Systemfoc, is expected to reduce CO₂ emissions by 1,500 tonnes annually.
The kiln aims to completely eliminate direct CO₂ emissions during the firing phase without compromising the technical and economic sustainability of the products.
Additionally, after years of research Italcer has patented a cutting-edge plant designed to capture, transform and fix atmospheric CO₂ emissions from its production plants, as well as recovering and converting other organic and inorganic pollutants into valuable materials. The group invested €5 million in social and environmental projects in 2023 alone.
