(Finance) – UniCredit and SACE support the sustainable development plans initiated by Reply, a company with a thirty-year history and based in Pederobba (TV), specialized in the production of small metal parts and precision components, particularly for the eyewear sector, but also for costume jewellery, fashion and medical accessories. An industrial reality relating to VeneVision, an eyewear cluster part of the VeNetWork group. The support intervention took the form of a new one financing of over one million euroswith the intervention of SACE Green guaranteelinked to the admission of the Venetian company to the PNRR call “Sustainable Investments 4.0”, focused on ESG issues and in particular on the circular economy.
The funds made available will go towards financing interventions aimed at improving the efficiency and sustainability of the entire production process: from the insertion of machinery and systems with high recycling of raw and secondary materials, to the adoption of a process for the recovery of thermal energy from machinery and its reuse for heating the rooms; from the optimization of production processes with high electricity savings and improvement of the quality of the working environment to the use of a washing system with continuous water recycling.
Reply was acquired in 2021 by VeneVisiona leading Made in Italy eyewear company, in turn founded in 2020 and which today groups together seven investee companies (in addition to Reply, Tris Ottica, Ottica Prealpi, Fotomeccanica, Eurofin, Tricolor, CiDi), with a turnover in June 2023 of 39.6 million euros, a workforce of over 500 units and export volumes of over 11 million euros.
SACE can issue green guarantees on domestic projects capable of facilitating the transition towards an economy with a lower environmental impact, integrating production cycles with low-emission technologies for the production of sustainable goods and services and promoting initiatives aimed at developing new mobility for minors Polluting emissions. This operation, carried out thanks to synergies with the SACE Network, falls within the scope of green agreement with UniCredit, in which SACE intervenes with a guarantee to cover loans intended both for large industrial reconversion projects and for SMEs and corporate MIDs that intend to reduce their environmental impact and start a sustainable transformation.
“All the companies in our group – he declares Nicola Belli, CEO of VeneVision and advisor to Reply – are involved in a challenging and virtuous path of continuous improvement of sustainability parameters with respect to the objectives set by the European Community for 2030. The reduction of environmental impact, in particular for the energy and water components, and the digitalisation of production processes in perspective of creating more efficient lean flows, are closely linked to investment policies in cutting-edge technologies. The support of Unicredit and Sace allows us to access the financial instruments dedicated to these development paths”.
“Reconciling sustainability, competitiveness and attention to the territory in which we operate is not only possible, but is a factor of success as demonstrated by the recent history of Reply and the VeneVision group. Our financial support intervention – declares Francesco Iannella, Regional Manager North East of UniCredit – is the result of the shared attention between the bank and the company towards sustainability issues and represents concrete proof, yet another, of UniCredit’s desire to accompany north-eastern companies towards green and digital transition paths”.