Students from Piedmont's technical colleges visit Sarotto Group, Angelo Arlandini Farm, Verduno Castle, and Consorzio Faber
Company visits are that time when students move from a design challenge on paper to touching a company reality to design an innovative solution. What makes the difference during visits are always the people: por many students, these experiences represent their first encounter with the world of work, a world that until then had remained an abstract concept.
At Sarotto Group, meeting Mauro Sarotto was decisive in understanding the research and development quotient behind the models and designs of the prefabricated houses the company produces, custom homes tailored to the needs of each client. Sarotto Group's are eco-friendly homes for the next generation built with rice husks, (the outer shell of the rice grain, which is removed during the milling process). This part of rice is not edible, but it has many other useful uses.
Piedmont is one of the largest rice growing areas in Europe, with an annual production of about 1.6 million tons. This accounts for nearly 52 percent of Italy's total rice production. Both traditional and high-quality rice varieties are grown in the plains of Vercelli, Novara, and Alessandria.
From the waste of rice production, Sarotto Group makes a natural cement from the union of husk with a natural binder and water, a material that, according to tests carried out by Sarotto Group, is high-performance, fireproof, anti-mold and very resistant. Of course, the result is the result of a great deal of experimentation, of processing with state-of-the-art machinery in which the company has invested over the years. Producing no more than is necessary and using mainly waste materials is Mauro Sarotto's mantra, and it made quite an impression on the students ofITS Energia Piemonte to hear him say it, and to see how a precise idea of sustainable development can be the basis of such a well-structured business activity.
Riccardo Antonuccio 's reception at Angelo Arlandini's, a farm participating in Upskill Piemonte, was also much appreciated by theITS Biotechnology Piemonte students. Riccardo has been to Oregon and Chile to study the cultivation of hazelnuts, a family business that started 80 years ago thanks to Giacomo Arlandini, Angelo Arlandini's father, who bought a 19th-century court in the hills of Monferrato, in the province of Alessandria.
Today Italy, with Piedmont especially, is the second largest hazelnut producing country in the world, second only to Turkey. It is followed, in third place, by the United States of America. The cultivable lands in Italy are certainly different from those in the U.S., which has forced Italian coril growers, those who grow hazelnuts, to engineer themselves and do a lot of research and development in technology to make use of the cultivated lands in the most effective way.
Riccardo now contributes to field management and farm management. The farm covers 30 hectares dedicated only to hazelnuts, and great emphasis is placed on innovation and sustainable growth. The challenge forITS Piedmont Biotechnology students will be to develop technological solutions to address production issues related to hazelnut plant diseases and irrigation inefficiencies.
Instead, the Langhe and Roero are the hills where Ca' del Re is located, the agritourism linked to the Verduno Castle owned by the Bianco family, who want in the coming years to open on a small plot of land, new facilities, individual sustainable housing units, with low environmental impact, where they can welcome a clientele attentive to sustainability and devoted to a certain way of understanding tourism. Here, too, the hospitality of Giovanna Bianco and Emiliano Chiappella, her husband, has made all the difference: they dream of a new way of staying in their Piedmont hills, of northern European inspiration, with great attention to the little ones and to people's well-being.
The challenge forITS Energia Piemonte students will be to develop an innovative concept, new ways of hospitality so that the facility becomes a reference model for sustainable tourism in the Barolo wine production area in Verduno.
Innovating and improving services or processes is also behind the nearly 60 projects currently active by Consorzio Faber, one of the landmarks in the area for the management of welfare, educational, social and health services. The students were welcomed by Luca Calvetto, who has a humanistic background and has always had a strong focus on people's well-being. The project on which the ITS Biotechnology Piedmont students will be working aims to encourage people at risk of institutionalization to stay at home through lightweight home monitoring solutions, using non-wearable devices and new technologies. The goal is to detect abnormalities in the daily behavior of the elderly and notify caregivers in a timely manner to enable intervention if needed.
The project is part of the second edition of Upskill Piemonte, an initiative promoted by Fondazione Sviluppo e Crescita CRT, Upskill 4.0 and UniCredit, to reduce the youth-enterprise skill mismatch.
Would you like to know more about the project? Write to us at info@upskill40.it