I was born and raised in a small village in the north of Italy, not so far from the Bra region were Arpa Industriale is located. Since I was young I had a passion for the nature and the environment. Every day at school I was really interested in science and I wanted to understand how things worked. My father was a Chemist and after my high school time, I decided to study Chemistry at University as well.
I obtained my Master degree in Chemistry in December 2012. After completing University, I decided to move to Cambridge in the UK to improve my English language skills and gain some experience abroad. During this period in the UK, I was also looking for a job and the Broadview International Trainee Programme attracted my attention. At that time the International Trainee Programme just started and offered the possibility of working between the 2 companies in the group (Arpa and Trespa) and I thought this would enable me to still be in contact with my family and friends in my region and, at the same time pursue the opportunity of an international career. After a couple of interviews with Arpa and Trespa HR and Management, I was accepted to the program.
During my Traineeship I was working mainly on projects for Arpa due to my chemical background and the advantage of speaking Italian, a key competence when working in the Arpa factory environment. My first 2 projects as an International Trainee were the introduction of the F44 resin at Arpa in order to decrease the formaldehyde emissions from the manufacturing process (impregnation, pressing) and the feasibility study of introducing lignin as potential substitute for phenol in the Phenol-Formaldehyde resins. Especially this last project really interested me due to the challenges from a chemistry point of view and also the possibility of improving the sustainability of our products by adding a natural raw material like lignin.
When my Traineeship finished, I was offered a contract with Trespa for the position of Development Chemist in the Resin Composite Technologies team (RCT). I immediately accepted it because my time in The Netherlands was great both professionally and personally. Eindhoven where I lived was a very international city with many expats and I also had really good connections with other International trainees joining the Broadview Group. The best thing about working and connecting with other (former) trainees from different nationalities and cultures was, besides having a lot of fun, that you could learn from their experiences and challenge your thinking and ideas, enabling you to grow and to improve your way of working.
During my years in the RCT team I start working on different resin development projects for Trespa and I also continued to work on the “Lignin project” in order to start producing the Lignin-Phenol-Formaldehyde resin on an industrial scale and implement the new technology at Arpa. Finally, in 2019 we managed to finalize the project and introduce this innovative technology to the market under the name of Bloom. It was great to see how an idea, like it was at the time, substituting phenol with lignin, grew during the years and finally became reality thanks to the hard work and cooperation of both R&D and Operations.
After the acquisition of Westag, Formica and Homapal, Nemho was the natural next step for Broadview and it was exciting for me to start this new chapter in my career. Looking back, it is impressive to see the steps that the R&D group took during just 8 years from a small group located in a laboratory below the Trespa resin tower to an International Research and Innovation center with 70+ employees, 4 R&D locations. I am personally proud to be part of this story and look forward to the next challenges ahead of us.