Randi Group’s philosophy of respecting nature and minimizing the environmental impact of its production activities finds exemplary expression at Villapana.
Since the company was added to the Group, in 1996, great investments have been made to make the production processes more efficient, mainly to extract the highest value from the natural raw materials coming from wineries all over Italy, and to reduce the environmental footprint.
Among the distilleries which process wine by-products, Italian and international, Villapana is the one that extracts the most products from marc, lees and sludge:
- First off, the alcoholic component is extracted, to produce alcohol for industrial and food purposes;
- The tartaric component is then extracted, from which calcium tartrate first and tartaric acid then are produced;
- The spent marc is then sieved to separate the grape seeds. The waste material is used as fuel for a biomass boiler, able to produce thermal energy for all the factory and electrical energy both for internal consumption and for the public network. Villapana is in fact able to autonomously satisfy all of its energy needs, from renewable sources: this helps save about 10.000 tons of CO2 each year;
- The grape seeds are then dried and mechanically pressed, to produce grapeseed oil that then undergoes a physical refining, without the use of chemicals, to eliminate undesired components and highlight its nutritional value;
- The waste material from all the production processes are then fed to a biodigestor, which produces natural gas that feeds a second co-generation plant. The digested material is then used in the agriculture fields as a fertilizer.
Villapana’s production process, as shown, is a closed loop that maximizes the use of the purchased raw material and gives back to nature what is left: a true example of circular economy.
