There are pizzerias in Italy and abroad that are unable to serve a pizza if they don't use certain flours. They look for selected and quality products that customers will appreciate. At the beginning there is wheat from the Italian plains which are a strong point of the 120 million euro of agri-food exports. Between Italian flours the most famous are the Caputo flours. A company from the South that has become a brand of excellence for pizza: the most consumed product in the world. The Antimo Caputo mill is a century-old company accredited by experience and tradition. This year it has decided to strengthen the sustainability of its processes. To create a new plant and a new mill, obtained a loan of 30 million euro by BPM and Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP). The two banks have chosen to support the agri-food sector, considered a "central sector for the Italian economy and help improve the quality of a typical Made in Italy product". The company responded with the Chief Executive Officer Antimus Caputo: "it is essential that financial institutions such as CDP and Banco BPM support the supply chain, in particular that of cereal milling, to continue to encourage sustainable and green investments in Made in Italy excellence". Words of gratitude, probably without the trust of the two banks new establishment of 16 thousand square meters of Ripalimosani, in the province of Campobasso, would not even have been planned. Nor the mega 2,5 Gigawatt photovoltaic system that will make everything work. The sign of trust towards a reality in the South it should infect other financial institutions. Behind the success of a brand are the anxieties and efforts of hundreds of other companies that encounter the first difficulties precisely with access to credit. What company wouldn't want to become more sustainable and save on energy? As demonstrated by dozens of researches, public aid is not enough to achieve higher turnover. There are dynamic entrepreneurs eager to grow and they await these forms of sustainable finance.
European primacy?
In the new Caputo mill, flour will be packaged for thousands of customers around the world. The structure will be equipped with the most advanced technologies for the conservation of cereals with the reduction of the spaces for handling goods. It will be there first mill in Europe of the latest generation built and designed for energy saving and use of renewable energy. The banks will share sustainability improvement objectives with the Caputos by applying specific performance indicators, ESG KPIs. The quality levels will have to be extended to the whole system. They are not yet widespread on farms in the South, but they could increase hand in hand with the introduction of clean energy production. As we said, the quality standards will certainly be appreciated by restaurant and pizzeria visitors. And perhaps we will also find the sustainability indices on the menus.
