North-East Competence Centre triples revenues

This is where projects such as iWAMO, an acronym for 'Intelligent Waste Monitoring', are born and grow, which engages the Padua-based company IT+Robotics, founded in 2005 as a spin-off of the University of Padua, to optimise the quality control of recyclable waste, which today is carried out by sampling and manually, or also Bridge, a technologically innovative and predictive Artificial Intelligence model, which was created to support brewers and brewers during the brewing process by Omnia Technologies. Just two examples to give an idea of what is happening within the Competence Centre of the Northeast, which closed the year with results that strengthen its ability to systemise 4.0-5.0 excellence and create virtuous mechanisms of 'contamination' between technology providers, end users, universities and research centres.

SMACT di Padova, sede del Competence Center. Area adibita ai dimostratori tecnologici interni

In detail, SMACT Competence Centre closed 2024 with revenues of EUR 10 million (of which 1.4 million in grants from MiMIT), tripling the figure of EUR 3 million recorded in 2021, the year in which the current governance took over. Positive data also on the profitability front, with a typical Ebitda of 1.5 million.

SMACT di Padova, sede del Competence Center - Spazi interni

The recently approved business plan aims at medium-term sustainability, even beyond the end of the current financing cycle linked to the NRP, and forecasts further growth in revenue to EUR 15 million, and profitability to EUR 1.9 million, at the end of this year.

"The results achieved are the fruit of a business model oriented towards concreteness and sustainability," says Massimo Guglielmi, President of SMACT Competence Centre. "SMACT has grown thanks to the PNRR opportunity, but the solidity achieved allows us to look to the coming years with optimism and to aim at generating even more value for our partners. SMACT is increasingly finding its role as an aggregator of a broad ecosystem of innovation that finds in it opportunities to collaborate both technologically and in building value-added propositions for the market."

SMACT di Padova, sede del Competence Center. Il panificio 4.0 in cui si produce pane in cassetta ed è gestito in collaborazione con la cooperativa sociale Work Crossing, che aiuta i detenuti a reintrodursi nel mondo del lavoro.

The activities and services offered by SMACT to businesses grow in step with the financial results. The number of partner companies in the SMACT ecosystem has exceeded 100. In 2024 alone, EUR 4.5 million worth of research, development and innovation projects involving universities and technology partners were launched, while consultancy services generated EUR 2.8 million, serving more than 200 companies. This is complemented by the training offer: 50 courses worth EUR 800,000 were delivered in the year under review, for a total of 1,800 training hours. All this thanks to a team that has grown over time to 27, with 14 new recruits in 2024.