Sustainability Report 2023

DEAR READERS,

We are pleased to present to you the fourth edition of the Irplast Sustainability Report, which offers an exhaustive overview on the management of the main sustainability impacts of our Company in 2023 and on the strategies implemented to promote the integration of sustainability in our business.

2023 was a year of significant challenges. We had to manage the repercussions of the geopolitical tensions resulting from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which caused an increase in raw material prices and a significant increase in energy prices. At the same time, we have faced a decrease in demand from end consumers, a consequence of the reduction in their purchasing power due to inflationary pressures. Despite international tensions affecting the global economy, shipping and supplies, Irplast has demonstrated remarkable resilience. Our strategy of internalizing production, guaranteeing the Empoli plant supplies of material made in the Abruzzo plant, has allowed us to reduce dependence on foreign suppliers and, at the same time, contribute to increasing local employment in Italy.

The current difficulties are added to the need to contribute to increasingly urgent environmental challenges, such as climate change, resource consumption and pollution, which make innovation from a sustainable perspective necessary in order to mitigate environmental impacts and align with evolution of society and the ongoing regulatory pressures. This transformation must include technological progress, considering that some of the tools available today, however advanced, do not offer sufficient reliability and safety guarantees, thus slowing down the implementation of virtuous projects with environmental benefits.

In this complex scenario, Irplast took the opportunity to dream big, and to invest vast resources to place the progressive reduction of the environmental impact of its products at the centre of its business strategy, laying solid foundations for an ecological transition for the benefit of all stakeholders in our value chain. The core of our strategy is to offer our customers products with a lower environmental impact without compromising the characteristics of the finished product in terms of quality and shelf-life, and without these negatively impacting the productivity of our customers’ plants. The objective for the next few years is to maintain our position as technological leader on the market by focusing on products with high added value in terms of sustainability.

We have adopted an approach to sustainability that emphasizes circularity, both in product design and in our production processes. Our Research and Development Department continually strives to optimize and enhance the inputs of the production cycle and to maximize the recyclability of our products. To achieve these objectives, we have adopted several innovative solutions. We have designed processes aimed at minimizing production waste and have focused on products that use less virgin plastic, favoring raw materials coming largely from mechanical and chemical recycling. Furthermore, in the future we will produce mono-material products that guarantee maximum recyclability levels, thanks to an investment of 55 million euros in a unique tailor-made machine for recyclable packaging.

In fact, recently, during the Interpack fair in Düsseldorf, we finalized the purchase of a new Brückner – LISIM line for the production of BOPP films, which will be installed in our factory in Atessa, Abruzzo. This investment will allow us to double our specialty production capacity, reaching 25,000 tons of specialty films by the end of 2025. The new line will be dedicated to the production of eco-sustainable single-material PP packaging, completely recyclable according to European directives.

The transition towards monomateriality represents a fundamental prerequisite which will give a strong boost to chemical recycling practices and which will allow greater use of non-virgin input materials.

In 2023, Irplast confirmed its presence on the list for the second consecutive year of the 100 Italian companies distinguished for their commitment to sustainability, as part of the 3rd edition of the Sustainability Award.

This recognition confirms the solidity of our path and strengthens Irplast’s competitive positioning among the most virtuous companies on the market.

We are aware that people constitute a key success factor for a company that aims to achieve increasingly ambitious objectives in terms product quality and sustainability. For this reason, we intend to ensure that our collaborators have a stimulating and educational work environment, in which everyone’s needs are listened to, and where talents are cultivated and valorised, with the aim of growing together.

Despite the progress achieved to date, we continue to have the ambition of wanting to make Irplast increasingly innovative, capable of emerging as a leader in rising to the challenges of the plastics sector thanks to the centrality of sustainability in the company strategy. The contents of the 2023 Sustainability Report highlight our efforts and our results in the research and application of solutions that produce a positive impact on the environment and on the community as a whole.

Fausto Cosi
Chief Executive Officer