A LEADING TRANSFORMER OF WOOD WASTE
SAVIOLA HOLDING & COMPOSAD Eco-ethical particleboard manufacturer Saviola Group has been embracing principles of sustainability and upcycling decades before it was considered fashionable Writer: Dani Redd | Project Manager: Matthew Taylor
Pioneering Circular Economy
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MANUFACTURING
T
his is the decade that matters. In 2016, 174 states and the European Union signed the historic Paris Climate Agreement, pledging to develop sustainably and to limit the increase in global temperature to well below two degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels (pursuing efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 °C). With temperatures edging up 1.16°C, there is pressure on both the public and private sector to reduce emissions and become more environmentally friendly. But while many businesses are only just waking up to the necessity for sustainability, it is built into
the very DNA of the Saviola Group, the world’s largest consumer of post-processed wood. “We use 100 percent recycled wood; 1.3 million tonnes of it every year, which is the equivalent of saving 10,000 trees every day, and one million tonnes of CO2 saved every year,” proclaims etc. etc. Nicola Negri, Managing Director of Saviola Holding and its integrated furniture company, Composad.
CIRCULAR VISIONARIES Negri has a background working with large multinational companies, but in 2015 was offered the role of Managing Director at Saviola Holding, which he was happy to accept.
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LA VERNICIATURA AZZANESE
INDUSTRIAL PAINTING FOR THE FURNITURE INDUSTRY SINCE 1977 With a long-time experience and consolidated know-how, we could be considered the reference point for the industrial painting of furniture components, especially as regards lacquering and painting (UV and traditional) of wood panels and furniture complements.
La Verniciatura Azzanese s.n.c. | Via Antonio Meucci, 14 33082 – Azzano Decimo (PN) – Italy
FORNITURE PRODUCERS Thanks to the optimization of all internal processes, we realize our product by strictly following the customer requirements, maintaing high-quality standards and respecting the delivery times agred. Our clients consider us a reliable partner, able to reach the same common objectives.
GENERAL CONTRACTORS
TAILOR MADE SOLUTIONS Thanks to high-level experience, as a rsult of many years of activity, we are able to satisfy the needs of a large and demanding clientele, with particular attention to details and quality, guaanteeing a high level customized production. By making use of the most advanced technologies and professional staff our productive process, completely automated, allows us to mantain a high qualitative standard, respecting the environment and employees health.
We also meet the needs of all those who need contract furniture, offering personalized solutions on time while managing different types of projects. The solid technological innovation, efficient and flexible organization are the pillars on which we base all of the activity.
DESIGNER We face with enthusiasm new challenges in order obtain unique results and products with a good balance between function and aesthetic. We work side by side with designers, helping and supporting them with the realization of their original products.
M: 0434 640856 | E: info@lvazzanese.it | P.Iva IT 00212020937
SAVIOLA HOLDING & COMPOSAD
Mauro Saviola
“ONE OF THE THINGS THAT GOT ME TO JOIN SAVIOLA – AFTER WORKING FOR MULTINATIONAL COMPANIES – WAS THAT I WAS REALLY FASCINATED BY THE FOUNDER MAURO SAVIOLA AND HIS IDEA TO PRODUCE PARTICLE BOARD WITH 100 PERCENT RECYCLED WOOD” “One of the things that got me to join Saviola – after working for multinational companies – was that I was really fascinated by the founder Mauro Saviola and his idea to produce particle board with 100 percent recycled wood,” he explains. “In 1963, I believe very few people around the world, apart from him, were thinking very much about sustainability. He was a visionary. And now that his son Alessandro Saviola is the president of the Group (since 2009), this concept is still the driver of the company – it is very sustainable and green oriented.” In other words, Saviola has been perpetuating a circular economy before most businesses had even heard of the concept. It began making its own glue (to make particleboard) in 1973, allowing it to establish an independent and integrated production system. By 1992, Mauro Saviola presented his idea for the Ecological Panel – particleboard made from 100 percent recycled wood. At the time, there were no products like this available on the market, and 6 | EME Outlook issue 38
SAVIOLA BY NUMBERS
€588 REVENUE
6mn
BOXES OF R.T.A FURNITURE PRODUCED EVERY YEAR
1.3mn
TONNES OF WOOD RECYCLED PER YEAR
1,459 EMPLOYEES
13
FACTORIES
4
BUSINESS UNITS
particleboard made entirely from materials deemed waste and scrap was greeted with some scepticism. But Mauro persisted, and by 1997 had achieved the goal of producing 100 percent recycled wood panels. “We are fully integrated from a vertical point of view. We produce the glue we need to stick the particle board together, the particle board and the furniture all in one location – Viadana, Mantua. Now we have 13 plants,” proclaims Negri. “This means we also avoid polluting the air with logistics. We are the only company in the world based in the same location, making 100 percent recycled board. We are totally unique.” In its current incarnation, Saviola Group consists of four different Business Units, each feeding into its circular economy. Saviola produces panels made with 100 percent recycled wood, which have been awarded an FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certification. It was recently charged with making the displays for the Italian Football Federation (FIGC), a project Negri is
La Verniciatura Azzanese PROFESSIONALISM AND EFFICIENCY AT OUR SERVICE Care for details and handcrafeted quality are combined with the most high-tech processes, in order to realize the right solutions to satisfy high qualitative, aesthetic and functional standards.
• to be cheap and maintain a balance between perfomarce and costs, in respect of the material used and time spent; • to be ecological, using easily recycled and reusable material • to optimize your logistic process.
PROTECTION OF THE PRODUCTS Depending on destination and trasportation, we select the most appropriate packaging for your load.
DIFFERENT UV FINISHES
According to your preference, we can use:
• • • •
• paper, wadding or similar to put between the two sashes, to amortize the vibration during the transport • coatings of shrink protective film of different weithts, to guarantee safe handing of the article; • custom cartons packaging, for your speciale logistics and distributions requirements.
Lacquer Opaque Varnish Polyestere
TRADITIONAL FINISHES • • • •
Fireproof Acrylic in Polyurethane Lacquered
BRUSHING ON ROUGH WOOD QUALITY CHECK AS A GUARANTEE OF CUSTOMER SATISFACTION Quality control consists ok making sure that the product is compliant with customer requirements, making before the delivery general checking and measurements in order to eliminate the products yhat do not match clients needs. Quality check is carried out following three steps: • in the beginning for not placing into production the wrong raw materials; • during the entire production process, when the products are not finished yet; • at the end, testing if finished products match the requirements, before the packaging and delivery.
The non-compliant products are carefully checked with a consequent corrective action.
LOGISTIC OPTIMIZATION Inform us all your storage needs: • maximim height of the pallets; • labels and barcodes to put on each package (n. order, place of destination..); • any special documents and certifications to be directly attached to th products.
We will examine and implement all your requests. ECOLOGY AND RESPECT FOR THE ENVIROMENT ARE AMONG THE MAIN VALUES OF OR COMPANY The company policy is particulary careful about technological innovation, to mantain high levels of productivity but respecting the enviroment at the same time. During the processes, we cary out many quality controls, which allows creating eco-friendly products. All of our systems have a modern and sophisticated air filtering system in order to avoid and paint dispersion.
THE PACKAGING AS THE FINAL STEP OF THE PRODUCTION PROCESS Our good’s packaging complies with the following goals: • to facilitate product transportation and delivery; • to protect products and finishings from dents and breaks
Azzano Decimo (PN), Italy | T 0434 640 856
|
E info@lvazzanese.it
SAVIOLA HOLDING & COMPOSAD
ARPA Technologies S.r.l. MASTER Factory, QUALITY, SPEED, EFFICIENCY to boost your business Since 1996 ARPA TECHNOLOGIES has been designing and developing MES solutions that stand out for their extreme ease of use and complete integration with management applications and third-party systems. These features are fully expressed in MASTER Factory®, the modular and scalable system developed by ARPA Technologies to meet the demands of all types of production processes and all sizes of companies. Successfully applied by leading companies in a variety of sectors woodworking and furniture (Gruppo Saviola), high tech (Sariv), car components (Marposs), metallurgy (Acciaierie Valbruna), pharmaceutical (Temmler) -, MASTER Factory® offers a wide range of features, such as:
Composad sells furniture made from Saviola’s recycled particleboard
Q: HOW DID THE COMPANY COME TO TERMS WITH COVID-19? NICOLA NEGRI: “We have been forced to be apart. To work together but not next to each other. We have been very quick in adopting to the shutdown that we had in March. We were prepared from a network point of view, but not a mobility point of view. The employees took the desktops under their arms and took them home and reconnected them, and the next day we were together, but apart. “This is such a nice group of people and this experience shows that we aren’t just a business, we are a group. I am proud of everyone for reacting so quickly.”
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inordinately proud of. The second Business Unit, Chemical, manufactures urea and melaminebased resins – not only are these used in its particle board formulations, but they are also sold to customers from various sectors in high performance and customised formulations. Its newest Business Unit, Life Science, sells high-performance slow release fertiliser making synergies with glue raw materials. The fourth Business Unit is Furniture - Composad, which sells furniture made from Saviola’s recycled particleboard. “When we started, the European community was not really alive – there were lots of barriers and custom duties. But the founder had it in his mind that Italy was not sufficient for him. That’s why he created Composad,” explains Negri. “The particleboards Saviola makes measure around five metres by two metres – he understood that the radius for these products, so as not to lose the margin, was about 500 kilometres:
• full integration with the new generation of ERP systems - SAP S/4 HANA, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle Cloud - and with automated warehouses, PDM, QMS, MMS; • real-time feedback on the status of work orders and stocks: through the collection of data on traceability and the control of production operations, the system shows the selected KPI in dashboards and reports; • identification of bottlenecks in the production departments: through the centralization of production data and procedures, the system highlights aspects which could be improved to increase organizational efficiency and visibly enhance the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE); • management of tools/equipment and parallel operations; • order scheduling based on available resources in order to reduce delivery times. These are just a few examples of how MASTER Factory® can boost your business. Discover the rest on our website!
www.arpatechnologies.com
SAVIOLA HOLDING & COMPOSAD
Bratek BRATEK is specialised in the production of chemical products and spraying devices for panel cleaning during edgebanding. Putting our philosophy into practice meant shaping a product range that ensures a high-quality edgebanding process and less defects waste. Leading companies, such as Saviola Holding & Composad itself, rely on us in order to face the most challenging aspects of the edgebanding process and to maintain top standards. Our customers’ trust represents a source of great pride for us and is the result of our constant commitment to customer support.
www.bratek.it
Gematech We, Gematech mbH, are a team of professionals who take special care of you. Our excellent product concept for customers who love quality.
merely Italy. He was struggling to get into other markets. But he realised, ‘if I cut these big panels, make some holes and add some edges, they can be used for furniture and go around the world’. So, in 2000 he did it.” It is this commitment to sustainability that Negri believes makes Saviola stand out from the pack. For example, last year Composad won an FSC award for Disegno, its elegant range of home office furniture. “Every one of us breathes ecology. It was in the blood of the founder, it is in the blood of his son and still flows in the veins of everyone who works at 10 | EME Outlook issue 38
Saviola,” he says. “Indeed, we don’t do just recycling, we do upcycling. We take a pallet, for example, with a value of one euro, and at the end of the chain we make furniture with a much higher value. We give a second life to the tree that was cut to make pallets. Recycling, for our company, is not sufficient. “When you see the mountain of raw material, those broken pallets, fruit crates, old furniture, window frames and cable reels, you realise it would have been burnt or thrown away but instead it is being used to make furniture, either directly or indirectly, and it feels really true. In this world,
First-class modification, further marketing and utilization of MAW / Nottmeyer - through-hole drilling rigs Our spare parts for your machines are top quality. For components that are not available on the market or are difficult to access, we are at your disposal professionally to solve your problem. We manufacture your spare part from the drawings in our archive. Our specialists with many years of experience build a new drilling rig with the drilling spindles that are suitable for you and take care of the overhaul and maintenance of your existing Drilling gears. All drilling gears we manufacture are checked and tested in our factory before delivery to our customers.
MANUFACTURING
Choosing Bratek means saving your time and money. ✓No more extra cleaning hours ✓Significant defects waste reduction ✓Increase of your edgebanding machine performance
The Never-Ending Quest For Perfection Bratek – Your Edgebanding Experts
www.bratek.it
Your success is our business The GeMaTech mbH “Society for Mechanical Engineering” is a global innovative service company in the field of special machines and plant construction . We offer you the full project support you need for throughfeed drilling machines with and without insertion technology, as well as for stationary drilling machines.
Maintenance Work Machine Inspections Spare Parts
Gematech mbH, Dieselstr.9, DE 31737 Rinteln
| Tel +49 5751 921 0360 | Fax +49 5751 921 0366 | Mail info@gematech-mbh.de EME Outlook issue 38 | 11
SAVIOLA HOLDING & COMPOSAD
“ALESSANDRO SAVIOLA, WHO HAS BEEN TAKING CARE OF THE COMPANY SINCE HIS FATHER LEFT, HAS BEEN PUTTING A LOT OF EFFORT INTO HUMAN CAPITAL” where everyone is promising to reduce their emissions by one or two or 10 percent, we are already doing it. For us it isn’t a promise for the future, it’s what we are doing already, a hundred percent and we do it NOW.” Each year, Saviola collects approximately 1.3 million tonnes of post-consumer wood through its network of 19 Ecolegno collection centres. These are distributed around Italy, France and Switzerland, in proximity to urban centres. They are visited by a wide variety of consumers, from small-scale greengrocers with used vegetable crates to large industries receiving multiple wooden boxes every day. Waste wood that would normally be deposited in landfill sites is instead collected, processed and transformed. Saviola deals with waste wood collection directly, in order that selection is implemented correctly. Not all wood can be reused, including railway sleepers have been chemically treated or window frames painted with chemical paints. 12 | EME Outlook issue 38
SCALING UP While Saviola started off as a small family company, it has inevitably grown larger over the years. “Alessandro Saviola, who has been
taking care of the company since his father left, has been putting a lot of effort into human capital,” explains Negri. “He understands that the company is becoming more complex as it and exposed to more countries and different languages. Human capital is at the core of our company.” The group’s managers have MBAs and years of professional experience, in line with other international companies. They also receive a raft of benefits. However, Saviola believes all its employees should be adequately compensated for their work – its factory workers receive financial recognition whenever the company performs according to its annual budget. “In the last four years we always gave this recognition to our employees. This makes them feel part of the company; not just having the name Saviola on their breast but getting rewarded when the company does well. When you get people involved, it creates a positive loop,” the MD comments.
MANUFACTURING
Walk on ‘Gripp’ and you’re safe!!!!
HOLDERS Production of hardware kits for the furniture industry, the covered area of the production plants is 7.000 square meters;
10 production lines
12 million packages per year.
Manual packaging department, equipped with a pc on each individual work station; product quality control guarantee
Gripp by: www.graepel.com +39072252939 info@cgferramenta.it
Industrial supplies, equipments for precision mechanic whorkshops, equipment for plumbing, carpentry, machine tools
Via Castelleone, 103/B - 26100 CREMONA Tel. 0372 471124 / 0372 471114 - info@upm-srl.it
Via Falagrate, 8 - 26029 SONCINO (CR) Tel. 0374 85901-2-3 - info@ferramentavanolispa.it
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SAVIOLA HOLDING & COMPOSAD
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MANUFACTURING
PROTECT THE PRESENT,
PROJECT THE FUTURE.
ENGINEERING L A B O R ATO RY C O N S U LT I N G FOR THE ENVIRONMENT
The positive working climate at Saviola has recently been formally recognised by Italian magazine Repubblica Affari & Finanza, who voted Composad as the second-best furniture company to work for in Italy – proof that investment in human capital delivers positive results. Saviola not only invests in its staff; it has also made significant investments into improving its facilities in recent years. “In the last three years the company invested a lot,” Negri says. “We invested €18.9 million in 2018, a bit more than €23 million in 2019, and spent more than €35 million in 2020. In the last five years we have doubled investment. We are a growing company. We updated our equipment inside. This is an internal project – continuously updating the company.” The firm is also continually expanding. Last December it acquired a 50 percent stake in Rheinspan, a German company which provides
chipboard for the furniture industry, tailored to customer requirements. The two companies’ capabilities will be combined in a novel approach to design, sustainability and circular economies. It will also allow Saviola to take on more cross-border projects. “When the opportunity came to enter Germany, which has the second largest furniture market in Europe, Alessandro did it. This joint venture is the result of his father’s ideas, which couldn’t be realised back then but can now,” Negri explains. Over the upcoming year, the company has one single target: growing and expanding abroad. “We want to be known in other markets,” the MD says. Composad is already on its way to realising this and expanding its footprint via ecommerce giant Amazon, which has recently set up a digital shop where it sells only FSC-certified furniture. Composad was the first European company to be listed in this space.
But despite a drive towards expansion, Saviola Group has no intention of forgetting the sustainable principles at the heart of its business. “We are going to issue this year in November, for the first time ever, a sustainability balance sheet. It has everything on it; how much CO2 we use, the quantity of reused materials,” Negri says. The path Saviola chooses to follow over the next few years will move the company forwards, while maintaining its principles of sustainability and respect towards the planet and its resources.
SAVIOLA HOLDING & COMPOSAD Tel: +39 0375/7871 info@saviolaholding.com www.grupposaviola.com
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SAVIOLA HOLDING & COMPOSAD Nicola Negri, Viale Lombardia, 29, 46019, Viadana (MN), Italy Tel: +39 0375/7871 info@saviolaholding.com www.grupposaviola.com PRODUCED BY EME OUTLOOK MAGAZINE