2' min read
2' min read
After having made the GIG galaxy a point of reference for the processes of ecological transition and decarbonisation of the chemical industry, Domenico Greco entrusts his creature Vectre with the objective of becoming the first European group leader in electrochemical production and technologies for the conversion of sustainable energy into decarbonised chemical carriers. "It will also be a strategic platform for the aggregation of long-term industrial development initiatives, within the broader energy chain of our country," adds the ceo and chairman.
Vectre, in short, as the point of arrival of GIG, a group with an aggregate turnover of 150 million euro and over 200 employees, which controls both the Abruzzo plant in Bussi, where the electrochemical production plants for chlorine (and its derivatives), caustic soda and green hydrogen are located, and the Sardinian plant in Assemini and the third in Torviscosa, in Friuli, in a joint venture with other important Italian chemical and pharmaceutical operators. The Bussi and Assemini plants represent the only two production poles of basic electrolytic chemistry in central-southern Italy and, with their increasingly sustainable and decarbonised production, enable the main production facilities in that area to be supplied with national and diversified production. "But it is precisely the electrochemical technology, which is the basis of our plants, that will drive Vectre's next investments and development programmes along two main axes," Greco anticipates. "It is the development of our know-how in electrochemical technologies, through the production of strategic ingredients to increase their efficiency and sustainability, and the expansion of our production portfolio of decarbonised chemical carriers of renewable energies.
In Bussi, with an investment of EUR 2 million, at the end of a three-year research cycle in cooperation with the start-up Co2Co and one of the most important international groups in the production and supply of sustainable energy, an innovative catalyst and a pilot plant for the conversion of CO2 produced by gas-fuelled power generators into carbon monoxide (CO) using green hydrogen will be developed over the next 18 months.
'It seems like a small investment,' emphasises Vectre's CEO, 'but through catalytic conversion, the result could become new raw material, a valuable resource to increase the sustainability of other industrial cycles, such as steel mills, or the production of syngas (a mixture of CO and molecular hydrogen, ed.), as a starting point for alternative fuels or other industrial chemicals. The impact on energy-intensive districts will be disruptive'.
