Venice, 2018 March 24th – The process leading to the concession from the Autorità di Sistema Portuale to Pilkington Italia has positively reached.
Pilkington is strongly tied to Marghera and its Port History: the glass factory dates back to 1924, on behalf of Società Italiana Vetri e Cristalli. Starting from that date and after many global refurbishments, on June 26th 2006, the Group has been bought by the Japanese Nippon Sheet Glass (NSG) keeping “Pilkington” as primary brand.
Last October, in the plant of Porto Marghera, a new float glass furnace was turned on. It grows in a historic place for glass production in Venice, that has been working since 1932 and where float technology started in 1987, has going on until 2012. The innovation has been possible thanks to the restructuration of most of the previous installations, and it gives a very good production increases. Among else, in this plant Pilkington Optiwhite™ is produced. This is a high innovative glass, obtained thanks to a careful selection of row materials that gives the result of an especially transparent glass, suitable for modern requires of industry and high quality furnitures.
The President of the Autorità di Sistema Pino Musolino affirmed: “Today we are proud and satisfied to officially re launch a firm who has shown real capabilities: these are the firms who let our port growing together with our territory. We support Pilkington that in its re-launch focus in innovation, starting from Porto Marghera.
Venice has always been one of the main areas in glass industry, because of the naval transport network that has been connected the places of production of the raw material from yesterday until today.
"With today's signing we confirm our will to move forward, and continue in the future to invest in the Marghera site, which due to its strategic position allows us to receive the raw material by sea, and on the other to be connected with all the major European markets " said the General Manager of Pilkington, Alessandro Michetti, at the end of the agreement.
The re-launch period had a good impact on employment too: Pilkington Italia in Porto Marghera occupies 192 workers, of which 60 were hired recently for the re-ignition of the furnace. The company's turnover in the financial year ended in March 31st, 2017 was around 60 million euros.
In conclusion, the President Musolino underlined that "the administrative procedure for the multi-year concession was completed in record time, and it was optimized by the integration in a single act of the authorization and the concession, both necessary by the law to carry out entrepreneurial activity: an optimization that was possible on the one hand thanks to an innovative procedural performance conducted in synergy by the competent Offices of the Autorità di Sistema Portuale and by the full operation of Pilkington in the various steps that led to the signature".
Per maggiori informazioni: www.pilkington.it
