The new Simonelli Group Campus in Belforte del Chienti opened on 25 January with an event entitled “Good business. Ideas and projects, community and environment, research and method”.

The inaugural event is the first in a series of events that will be hosted at the Campus using the Engaging Talks ?format that will offer contributions by important personalities from various cultural fields and business sectors. The events will be open to the local community.

The first day saw more than 80 guests – including local companies, suppliers, universities, public and private bodies. The guests were shown around the new spaces and presented with the principles that guided Simonelli Group in the creation of its Campus.

The opening was managed by Antonio Calabrò (Institutional Affairs Manager and Senior Cultural Advisor for Pirelli and Director of the Pirelli Foundation), who talked about the new challenges facing the company and the resources that can be exploited to offer an innovative and convincing response to a society and economic model undergoing a deep transformation.

There was then a round table discussion – moderated by the RAI journalist Guido Maurino – concerning the role of universities, businesses and institutions in the development of the local area. The participants included the rector of Marche Polytechnic University, Prof. Gianluca Gregori, the rector of Camerino university, Prof. Claudio Pettinari, the rector of Macerata university, Prof. John McCourt, the president of ISTAO, Prof. Mario Baldassarri and the president of the permanent commission of the Marche Regional Council, Renzo Marinelli.

The proceedings were brought to a close by Ermete Realacci (honorary president of Lagambiente, founder and president of Symbola) who highlighted how the environment offers an opportunity for competitiveness and concrete potential for the growth of businesses, the local area and the Italian system as a whole.

The Simonelli Group Campus is a multidisciplinary space of 1,000m²?dedicated to research, training, open innovation and business culture with the aim of providing a stimulus for growth of the local area and its community. It is a physical place with a strong social and ethical vocation divided into distinct sectors devoted to innovation, networking and research.

Inside the Campus there are specifically prepared spaces for coffee specialisations (infusions systems, milk, water), along with traditional and digital management training courses (webinars, podcasts, e-learning) and a large workshop area for scientific research applied to coffee. The workshop area is the core of the RICH project (Research and Innovation Coffee Hub), the research centre created in 2016 in collaboration with Camerino University to conduct scientific studies on coffee and its chemical and physical properties.

The Campus also includes an experience area for meetings and networking which is open to companies, institutions and schools, where doing business and creating culture can work and grow together.

For Simonelli Group, this new structure represents a further step towards greater involvement in the local area, where it can not only reinforce its industrial presence but also its innovative, social and sustainable identity.

Simonelli Group is a “open company” where, in order to create value and reinforce its market competitiveness, it is not sufficient to rely only on internal ideas and resources, but it is also necessary to make use of external tools and skills, which are varied and work in synergy.

Simonelli Group has embarked on this growth path by reinforcing its commitment to the local area which has always been its hallmark. This is a commitment that the company is reaffirming with the opening of its Campus in Belforte del Chienti, in the heart of the district where in 1936 everything started and from where it intends to proceed along its path towards the international markets, whilst preserving its strong bond with the local community.