Hotbed of innovation and sustainability
San Marco Group is a family-owned business in its fourth generation, leader in Italy in the architectural coatings’ segment, as well as Etics, organic plasters and effect paints for the building industry. The Group owns six brands and it counts seven production units in Europe and three commercial companies that distribute products characterised by an innovative, technologically advanced and truly sustainable approach. The San Marco Group has presented the ReThink Next Generation Coatings.
What did the ReThink Next Generation Coatings entail and what were your goals?
Giovanni Marsili: The ReThink Next Generation Coatings project was launched with the ever-relevant aim of identifying innovative compounds and cutting-edge technologies capable of reducing the environmental impact of building products.
The initiative, which involved us for almost a year, gathered more than 40 proposals from 7 countries: it was an opportunity to interface with different Italian and foreign realities and to create new synergies aimed at achieving interesting goals in the field of sustainability and innovation.
Which innovations were selected?
Giovanni Marsili: The solutions were evaluated by a jury who was asked to award prizes to the best raw materials in each of the two categories of competition (Emerging Solutions and Ready-made Solutions), with a minimum of one proposal and a maximum of three in each category. According to the evaluation criteria, the first to be considered were those that could reduce the environmental impact, i.e. formulation, production, application, use or disposal methods that reduce the carbon footprint and potentially polluting agents (Titanium dioxide, VOC).
The level of innovation and novelty of the solutions was also considered, as well as the level of technological development, ease of implementation, commercial impact, availability of materials and any economic investment required to develop the project. In the end, the initiative rewarded the Danish company Shark Solutions – presented by the Italian company Eico Novachem, its official distributor – the German companies Evonik Operations and
Heubach Colorants, and the Italian company Eni. Shark Solutions, developed “Dispersion PVB”, a binder based on recycled polyvinyl butyral, a polymer obtained entirely from recycled car windscreens; Evonik, whose Coating Additives business line proposed “Spherilex”, a range of silica-based additives with a spherical morphology that can increase the anti-abrasive properties of coatings, thus reducing the use of polymers while guaranteeing the same durability; while Heubach Colorants created “Next Generation Pigments”, pigments for colouring pastes developed with the aim of speeding up the dispersion process and thus reducing energy consumption. The winner in the Emerging Solutions category was Eni, with a solution for the capture and use of gaseous carbon dioxide through mineralisation. Finally, in the same category, the jury gave an honourable mention to Swiss start-up Impossible Materials for the development of “Cellulose white pigments”.
This has just been the starting point. What will be the next steps?
Giovanni Marsili: We want to pool our expertise and initiate joint research to make our laboratories an ever more vibrant hotbed of innovation and sustainability. The raw material tests will therefore continue over the coming months to allow a thorough analysis of the opportunities presented by the competition to further reduce the environmental impact of our products.
