RadiciGroup celebrates thirty years in the chemicals business

An important stage, a goal and a starting point for new objectives: this year RadiciGroup celebrates thirty years in the chemicals business. The group wanted to commemorate this important anniversary with all employees of Radici Chimica, the Novara company that was founded in 1986 and thus the focus of the event. Hosting the evening of festivities was Sala Borsa in Novara, where the guests enjoyed a company dinner and a jazz concert, “Hallo Louis”. The latter event was part of this year’s international Novara Jazz festival, which Radici Chimica has supported for many years.

In welcoming the numerous guests to the evening’s celebration, Stefano Loro, CEO of RadiciGroup Specialty Chemicals, said: “First of all, I would like to thank all our people in chemicals, our employees who make a valuable contribution to our group every day.

Specialty Chemicals is a leader in the production of polyamide 6.6 and chemical intermediates and today has a staff of 513 at our various sites in Italy, Germany and China. In 2015 we achieved consolidated sales revenue of 370 million euro”.

Also offering his thanks to the employees and collaborators was Angelo Radici, president of RadiciGroup, who attended the event with his brothers, Maurizio Radici, vice president and COO of RadiciGroup, and Paolo Radici, member of the board of directors of Radici Partecipazioni. Among the guests at the event were Andrea Ballarè, mayor of Novara, Aureliano Curini and Gianni Canazza of Confindustria Novara (Novara Manufacturers’ and Service Companies’ Association), Emanuela Allegra, councillor of the Province of Novara, and Paolo Lamberti and Andrea Piscitelli of Federchimica (Italian Chemical Industry Federation).

During the evening, which concluded with a jazz concert, featuring Alberto Mandarini (trumpet) and Daniele Tione (piano), presentations were also dedicated to the people and history of Radici Chimica. Firstly, there were the employee awards: twenty years of service to Radici Chimica was attained by Franco Colli, Maurizio Campari, Davide Re, Massimo Colella, Mario Tommasini, Massimiliano Fungo, Fabrizio Invernizzi, Bruno Gentilcore, Diego Mazza, Luca Tognoli, Lorenzo Banda, Giuseppe Lentini, Paolo Zanotto, Andrea Manfrinato, Fabrizio Cattaneo, Giovanni Genio, Davide Tessarin, Massimo Rinaldo and Rita Barbaini.

The people of RadiciGroup Chemicals were again the leading players of a special moment when the group presented the book “People in chemistry, men and solutions”. In this book - or more appropriately photo-book, as described by the author, Bergamo artist Leone Belotti - fantasy and reality intertwine and become confused; words and images lead the reader to discover a cross section of the history of RadiciGroup and its chemical companies.

The story starts in the spring of 1986, when Gianni Radici, founder of RadiciGroup - a company already active in the synthetic fibres and plastics businesses - decided to buy and put back into service the former Montedison plant in Novara, which had been shut down for about three years with some departments in a completely abandoned state. The factory had operated three chemical production lines: nitric acid, adipic acid and salification. Thanks to the determination of Gianni Radici and his technical staff, the no longer used facility was salvaged and restored, and the production plants were renovated. This is how Radici Chimica was born, and its founding allowed continue and maintain its excellent heritage of tradition, experience and competence in the chemical industry - a precious heritage of Italian chemistry.

Five years after its launch, Radici Chimica built an upstream plant at its facility for the production of hexamethylenediamine, a chemical intermediate that was needed to complete the polyamide 6.6 production chain. Thus, in 1991, RadiciGroup started up production of polyamide 6.6. This was an important achievement, which was followed by another sizeable investment in 2001: the creation of Radici Chimica Deutschland in the industrial complex of Zeitz (Tröglitz), a territory in the heart of former East Germany. Today this is one of the most modern chemical plants in Europe engaged in the production of adipic acid, nitric acid and cyclohexanol-cyclohexanone mixture.

In order to strengthen its sales network in Asia, in 2003 RadiciGroup set up RadiciChem Shanghai, a reference point for the marketing of polyamide polymers, chemical intermediates and synthetic fibres. Then, during following year, in a joint venture with Atel, RadiciGroup built Novel, a new turbogas combined-cycle cogeneration plant capable of generating 100 MW of electricity, plus the steam needed by Radici Chimica.