People and
technology. Ingenious intuitions and ambitions. Continuous and transversal
research. These are some of the ingredients of a successful recipe. Profile of
NPT, a 63 million euro company based in Bologna and today a world leader.
Giampaolo Colletti interviews Enrico Goldoni, CEO of NPT for FARE INSIEME
by Giampaolo Colletti
@gpcolletti
Photocredit: Giacomo Maestri e Francesca Aufiero
This is the
story of the man who in the Emilia-Romagna region is affectionately referred to
as cinno (child). In this case we
refer to a young enterprising student with an unparalleled curiosity. After
having completed the school, the cinno
whose deeds we are about to tell you had the habit of going to visit his father
at work. And then on Saturdays he tried to give his small but great
contribution to the family business. Of course, it was child's play for him to
play great, but how many things he learned in the field over time. We are in
Crespellano, a town of ten thousand souls in the municipality of Valsamoggia,
in the metropolitan area of Bologna. That cinno
was and is Enrico Goldoni, today the head of that company, which was born as an
industrial project way back in 1978. Born in 1971, with a degree in Economics
and Business and a work internship in the UK in his pocket, Enrico Goldoni
joined the company in the late 1990s, effectively leading it to expansion. The
initial intuition had come from his father, who, together with two friends who
had become partners, had turned into an entrepreneur. Because Carlo Alberto
Goldoni between the seventies and eighties decided to increase his
specialisation in the world of adhesives and sealants. But it was with Enrico, that
curious and tireless cinno, that the
company in more recent times bet in the area of research and in that of plant
technologies in favour of process automation.
Company
profile. Welcome to NPT, an excellence engaged in
the production of adhesives and sealants in two chemical families: that of
polyurethanes and that of silanes. A company that grew rapidly by focusing on
research and foreign expansion. In short, on the future. Although the
headquarters are in Bologna, the centre of excellence for R&D and for the
production is based in the factories of Villanova D'Ardenghi, in the Pavia
area. NPT exports to 60 countries worldwide. The turnover is 63 million euros
with a forecast of 70 million for 2023. Today NPT is a leader in the production
of bonding and sealing solutions, addressing, respectively, two reference
markets. The first is the retail one, where there is SIGILL, today among the
brands in Italy to offer a vast range of items, starting from adhesives and
sealants and technical items that are sold in the normal trade sector and in
large-scale distribution. Objective: to provide solutions for home improvement,
technical maintenance and do-it-yourself. The second one is related to the
industrial and professional markets. These are tailor-made proposals linked to
the world of industry and specifically to the transportation and general
industry sector. «In fact, we provide
elastic bonding and assembly solutions between heterogeneous materials that
allow countless advantages in terms of duration, better performance and
stylistic solutions that would be difficult to achieve with traditional
assembly techniques. The technological elements are fundamental as we have
focused on a highly automated production process, strongly linking our
management system to factory automation»,
says Enrico Goldoni, CEO of NPT. The research is a lot, continuous and
passionate. The company designs and produces the basic polymers that improve
performance. «This is our heart, or
rather the competitive advantage and our distinctive feature. First of all, a
strong basic knowledge is required to produce polymers. In addition, we have the
great advantage of producing them tailor-made and they are then formulated for
the production of adhesives and sealants capable of offering specific
characteristics», says Goldoni.
Technologies and people. What tells this story of ideas scaled in the world is also the evolution
of a specialised manufacture. It is a question of presiding over a niche with
high technological and investment barriers. All this is also related to
research. «Our
laboratories are quite articulated. It all starts from the Analytical Lab in
which we have the opportunity to carry out analyses on raw materials as well as
in-depth checks on competitor materials. Then there is the Synthesis Lab in
which the polymers are synthesised up to the production scale-up process. And
continuing there is the Formulation Lab in which the products formulated on the
basis of predefined technical specifications are mixed and defined. And also
the Technological Lab», says Goldoni. The company deals with all the main
applications from the automotive, construction, parquet floor and
do-it-yourself sectors. «We find advanced technological solutions to satisfy
the global market, but our strength lies in the team. We believe that people
make the company», says Goldoni. Meanwhile, the entry of the international
partner Dulux/Nippont Paints has brought great motivation. Roots that are
linked to the territory, but we continue to look enthusiastically to
international markets. After all, for those who work at their best, the world
is as small as an orange.
https://podcast.confindustriaemilia.it/
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