Sustainability: The Heart of Innovation

Vito Rimoldi's annual meeting, entitled Sustainability: The Heart of Innovation, took place at its production site in Busto Arsizio on Saturday, December 11. It was attended by Vito Rimoldi employees, outside workers with the Solidarietà e Servizi cooperative, and some guests.

The issue of sustainability, which means aiming for long-term value creation, has been addressed by the company across various domains: from the impact of the company's production activities on the environment, to an increase in the company's share capital, to social initiatives.

"It is not possible to be sustainable and innovative without being animated by hope," says CEO Claudio Rimoldi, recalling that in March 2020 the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic completly upset the company's investment and growth plans.

"At the outbreak of the pandemic, the fear of losing everything in a flash was enormous -in part because of the commitments we had made- but we never lost the hope that we would learn, improve, and innovate even through those challenging circumstances."

Grounded in this understanding of entrepreneurship an original and courageous project arose in 2021: to furnish the bright, large, and clean 5,000 square meter warehouse in Busto Arsizio with contemporary art works created specifically for the company.

The management took seriously the innate need for beauty that animates each and every worker and decided to create a pleasant place to go to work.

"Why should we involve an art gallery to create works to be placed in a shed of industrial production?" asks Rimoldi, and then offers an answer “Because displaying art in the workplace can improve the experience of workers and help them work better. There is a strict connection between beauty, life, and work. Even in the most technical activities, like ours, I can't help but think about what lies beyond the purely technical aspects of the job ".

This is how La Compagnia dell'arte, a group of artists who are interested in making their common activity into opportunities to search for and depict Beauty, entered the scene.

Pivotal for the project has been the Rubin Gallery and its partners Jimmy Rubin and Paolo Galli, who took care of all the organizational aspects.

Over the course of about twelve months, which were filled with intense dialogue between the artists and all those who work in the company, the artists went from idea to action.

The first part of the project was presented at the company's meeting. It involved the exhibition of giant reproductions of the works of art by the painters Letizia Fornasieri, Elisabetta Necchio and Francesco Zavatta.

Additional works by Francesco Santosuosso and Francesco Fornasieri will be exhibited in the next few months.

The relevance of this project was also confirmed by the head of TÜV NORD, Vito Rimoldi's certification partner. During the recent ISO45001 safety audit, the project was viewed with admiration. "It has been demonstrated" – said the auditor – "that a pleasant, comfortable, clean and well-kept workplace increases safety and decreases the risk of accidents".

The rich program of the morning was followed by a lunch together inside the plant, among the paintings and the industrial machinery: it is an original combination of art in the strict sense and the art of manufacturing.