Innovation in the Italian chemical industry

For Italian chemical enterprises R&D represents a key activity in order to be considered valuable partners from customers.

Actually, in Europe Italy is second only to Germany for number of innovative chemical companies (nearly 1200) and also for number of companies with R&D activity.

The possibility for downstream sectors to offer innovative products often stems from the developing of new chemical intermediates with specific properties.

Chemical companies constantly innovate also to improve processes as well as environmental standards. Not only major companies, but also smaller ones are strongly engaged in innovation. In the last years, according to a recent survey of Federchimica on innovation, more than 70% of chemical firms has been strengthening R&D as it is considered critical for facing increasing international competition.

In Italy a good number of graduates in chemistry and chemical engineering is available. The quality of Universities is excellent as proved by the considerable number of scientific publications obtained.

For chemical companies making research means more and more entertaining strong relationship with Universities and Research Institutes. In particular, there are important opportunities to cooperate with the National Research Council (CNR), whose activity regards base research as well as technology transfer and the developing of new applications. Federchimica has signed an agreement with CNR in order to promote such cooperation. Moreover, in Italy are located 27 Scientific and Technological Parks with specific competencies on chemicals and bio-medicals.

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