Cream of the crop
Think of quality ice cream, and you think of Italy. Philip Yorke reports on Sammontana, a company that is at the pinnacle of the gelato industry in Europe and is now setting new standards for greener production processes.
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he story of Sammontana began more than 70 years ago when Romeo Bagnoli, a father of six children, established a café with an ice cream bar in a village near Florence. He subsequently bought a dairy in the village of Sammontana. News of his passion for ice cream quickly spread throughout Italy, creating a demand which sees no sign of abating. Today, Sammontana is a large, Italian blue-chip company that employs more than 1,000 people and operates four state-of-the-art production sites in Italy, as well as a modern logistics hub in Montelupo in the province of Florence. Sammontan produces more than one billion portions of frozen ice cream and confectionery every year. The company is famous for its classic ice cream and confectionery brands: Sammontana. TreMarie, II Pasticcere, Mongele and Bon Chef. All these products offer a unique taste, born of the intuition, care and passion of the founder, for which the company is renowned throughout Europe.
Delivering ‘greener’ ice cream Italy’s market leading producer of ice cream and frozen confectionery saw a 3 per cent growth in turnover to €362 million and an EBITDA stable at €45.7 million in 2017. The company generates over 40 per cent of its turnover from the frozen croissant sector where it is the clear market leader with its well-known Tre-Marie brand. Sammontana has pioneered a dedicated green conversion programme which is aimed at significantly reducing the environmental impact of its processes. This includes adopting the most advanced packaging solutions, the increasingly efficient use of water and energy, the effective selection of raw materials and innovative waste and logistics management.
Pioneering eco-design Thanks to its collaboration with the University Consortium of Applied Research (CURA) of the University of Padua, the company has adopted an operating procedure and customised models of ‘Eco-Design’ to evaluate more sustainable design alternatives. “We identified the production processes that create a greater environmental impact, on which 100 Industry Europe
