He had promised it in business plan, allocating a ceiling of 5 billion euro, and now Intesa Sanpaolo has closed the first circular economy loan, with the Maire Tecnimont group, for the creation of a mechanical plastic recycling plant, among the largest in Europe. The plant will be able to produce over 40 tonnes of recycled polymers a year. The transaction is therefore the first concluded by the Bank's Corporate & Investment Banking Division, through the Global Corporate Department, based on the ceiling intended for the circular economy that the bank has made available between now and 2021, and was structured by Banca IMI, with the support of the Intesa Sanpaolo Innovation Center Circular Economy Team.
Intesa Sanpaolo has been since 2015 the sole Financial Services Global Partner of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the main organization promoting the circular model. Intesa Sanpaolo Innovation Center, a company of the Intesa Sanpaolo Group dedicated to the frontier of innovation, acts as an accelerator of the development of the circular economy in Italy. In 2018, the Innovation Center, alongside Cariplo Factory, created the first dedicated Italian laboratory in Milan in order to promote the transition towards this new economic system.
“The operation – he commented Mauro Micillo, Head of the Corporate and Investment Banking Division of Intesa Sanpaolo and Chief Executive Officer of Banca IMI – is highly innovative both from an ecological and an economic point of view: we have foreseen the periodic verification of some circular economy KPIs useful for evaluating the performance of the plant, in terms of quantity of recycled plastic material and quality of regenerated polymers, correlating these indicators of the economic incentives for the improvement of the conditions applied to the loan. Thanks to the excellent work of Intesa Sanpaolo Innovation Center - the company of our Group dedicated to innovation and the diffusion of the circular economy, chaired by Maurizio Montagnese and led by Mario Costantini - we have all the tools to fully seize the opportunities offered by the circular economy , an innovative and strategic challenge that will bring important benefits on a global level. Finally, we are very happy that the first loan dedicated to the circular economy – on the 5 billion euro ceiling announced by the CEO Carlo Messina – is destined for an Italian excellence, such as the Maire Tecnimont Group, for one of its first initiatives green acceleration”.
