Pastificio Granoro, 18 million investment in the Corato factory

Investments for 18 million by 2028 in the plans of the Granoro pasta factory in Corato, in the province of Bari, a centre of the milling and pasta industry with international weight. The investments go in several directions, all useful to strengthen the positioning of the pasta factory founded by Attilio Mastromauro and now led by his daughter Marina, in the international market of pasta made in Italy.

Part of the investments aim to increase energy self-production, make the production processes of the current 12 packaging lines of over 160 references more efficient, and accelerate digital evolution. The pasta factory - which closed 2025 with aturnover of 97 million euro estimated to grow by 6%, to 103, in 2026 - thus aims to make its industrial model more sustainable and digitised.

With the investments in energy self-production, the focus is on integrating the 1.1 MW photovoltaic plant, which will soon come into operation, enabling coverage of between 15% and 20% of the annual electricity needs, thanks to the trigeneration system already present in the plant, capable of producing electrical, thermal and cooling energy at the same time. Thanks to this configuration, 85% of the production site's overall energy needs will be covered by self-production and the remaining portion will be offset by the purchase of certified energy from renewable sources.

Along with energy investments, the Granoro pasta factory - which has 123 employees and obtains 52.5% of its turnover from abroad, while domestic turnover is 47.5% - is also resolutely focusing on the digitalisation of the entire production area, introducing a latest-generation manufacturing execution system (Mes), which allows real-time monitoring of all production and packaging lines.
The system thus collects timely data from all machines to know their performance and consumption, improve planning efficiency, optimise production and reduce product and packaging waste.

In parallel, Mastromauroplans investments in new technologically advanced machinery, up to more than EUR 3 million, and has completed the upgrading of the digital infrastructure of the entire plant, with the adoption of the latest generation of servers and the updating of IT systems to support company data security and business continuity. This high level of digitisation, together with the large amount of data from Mes sources, has attracted the attention of the University of Bari, with the start of collaborations for the launch of applied research projects, particularly in the fields of technical physics and process engineering. Data from production plants are in fact useful for further improving energy efficiency and process optimisation, particularly in the pasta drying phase.