D – What about the origins of SEA MARCONI
R – Sea Marconi was born in Turin (Italy) on 19 December 1968. There was a need for a name easily remembered, providing a newly born company a distinctive and friendly character.
However, an acronym did not look sufficient, although I had already thought about SEA (Società per l’Elettronica Applicata – Company for Applied Electronics and later on, Systems for Energy and the Environment) At this point I decided to associate to this symbol the name of an internationally recognised illustrious person.
My choice was the Nobel Price for physics Guglielmo Marconi, who always fascinated me because he was an excellent scientist, an entrepreneur, an Italian pioneer outside the classic academic and industrial canons and an experimenter capable of translating his brilliant ideas into universally applied innovations.
Paradoxically, it was indeed its academic ignorance to bring him to realise what official science considered impossible: in 1895 he transmitted through the ether signals and information with electromagnetic waves (according to the knowledge of the time, it was impossible to overcome natural obstacles).
Marconi ignored such studies and he was right. He managed to demonstrate and implement its ideas, to create over them an industrial empire and cast an indelible mark in the scientific and industrial history of mankind.
Thus, Marconi could become the right “star” guiding a very young entrepreneur 22 years old, surely equipped with ideas, passion and determination.
Consequently, SEA MARCONI was an easily remembered name with an innovative capacity and international vision, similar to its ideal originator.
D – What was Sea Marconi initially involved with? Can you run through its fundamental steps?
R – Initially, Sea Marconi was making electric protection and grounding systems and, parallely, was involved with the protection of electric transformers and insulating fluids.
The first idea providing a light for today’s Sea Marconi was born during a conversation with a Customer in Collegno (Turin, Italy) who asked me who could “chimiché” (a Piedmontese dialect term meaning to treat chemically) the oil filling his overloaded electric transformers.
In effect, the need was shared by other customers, since at the end of the 60s, the time of the Italian economic boom, the demand for energy was constantly increasing and the limited dimensions of electric installations did not allow the addition of equipment, thus the transformers in operation were stressed at maximum load.
The developing need for the analysis of the oils did not find a response in the maintenance practice of the time, I didn’t know the sector, that at that time didn’t exist; thus I decided to investigate this subject. I bought the CEI standards in Milan and I geared-up for measuring the breakdown voltage by building personally a , and, later on, I also offered the measurement of acidity.
A new market was developing, a different perspective and an opportunity to develop and feed what is today the largest independent data base in the sector.
Through the years, the electric protection side of the business progressively diminished. The company started to get more and more involved in chemistry, also pushed by the demand for environmental protection that in 1976 generated the European Directives on PCBs.
The same year, precisely on 10 July 1976, about 40,000 were evacuated as a consequence of the dismal environmental disaster “the case of Dioxin in Seveso”. It involved the most serious case at global level of contamination by 2,3,7,8-TCDD (“Seveso Dioxin) due to the explosion of a reactor in sector A101 – Section B of the Icmesa spa factory in Meda (Milan, Italy).
In December 1982 we received an invitation by Senator Luigi Noé, responsible for the Special Office for Seveso at the Lombardy Region, to present a proposal for the detoxification of tetra chlorinated dibenzo para dioxin (2,3,7,8-TCDD). We carefully examined the technical-scientific and political implications of the request and we accepted to take the challenge. After a while, we obtained the first successes in the laboratory, giving hopes for specific applications on dioxin.
That event gave us the possibility of measuring ourselves on new frontiers and, most of all, providing concrete solutions to problems deeply felt by public opinions, encouraging us to proceed in that direction. The birth of the CDP Process® used to dehalogenate and detoxify PCBs in the oils filling transformers, together with the service for the diagnostic coverage of fleets of transformers, considerably widened the demand for our services.
In 1992 Sea Marconi Envirotech Italia srl (Lecce) was founded, to provide an effective response to our Customers in the Central-Southern Italy.
I consider as fundamental steps the successes obtained abroad: in 1996 thanks to Sea Marconi, Cyprus was declared the first PCBs free Country, in 1999 Sea Marconi started supplying National Grid in UK. Our desire for a European and international prospective started to materialise.
In 2001 Sea Marconi France sarl was born, to be directly present in the French market; in 2002 started Sea Marconi Energia y Medioambiente sl to satisfy the Spanish market. Lastly, in 2004 Sea Marconi Latino Americana sa was founded in Buenos Aires (Argentina).
The experience achieved, together with the engagement in research and innovation, allowed us to coordinate a group of 11 European partners for the European research project Haloclean® (1999). This is a chemical-thermal process that, through a low-temperature controlled pyrolysis (a thermal oxidation process in a oxygen-free condition), provides the recovery of noble metals and to obtain re-usable resources from electronic scraps and polymer materials. However, I am convinced that the true mission of the Haloclean project is the production of clean energy from residual biomasses, renewable sources and the valorisation of various materials (polymers, biological etc.)
D – What kind of difficulties the company encountered and how were they overcome?
R – The beginning (1969 through 1973) were the most difficult and arduous years, social unrest, war in the Middle East and the first oil crisis, caused a radical change of the Italian and International scenarios. An additional component was the lack of experience, since I was not yet organised to make an enterprise and I had not yet a financial background giving breathing space.
In my opinion, an entrepreneur must have three critical leverage points on his own: first of all, a solid entrepreneurial idea, an enormous passion for his work and, without doubt, he needs courage, meaning the capacity of taking risks and to achieve the results of project initiated.
Obviously, some luck is also necessary, since things could happen that go beyond your will or your power.
I started during the period of the economic boom (1968) and at once there was the “sboom” of the “Hot Autumn” and the oil crisis of 1973. Then, in 1987, I restructured the company, leaving the electric protections sector, focusing on new products and new markets.
The difficulties and the disappointments have always been overcome with the support that my family, my wife Graziella and daughters Cristina and Michela, the company and the people working in it provided me with.
I remember with great emotion the discovery and the on-site validation of the “CDP Process®” for the decontamination and chemical detoxification of the “Seveso Dioxin” (1982). The experiments were conducted at the European Common Research Centre of Ispra coordinated by prof. Sergio Facchetti and in collaboration with the University of Turin (prof. Pietro Tundo), trying where nobody had ever succeeded. The results proved being an absolute success at worldwide level.
The discovery gave Sea Marconi a visibility also on the media and reinforced the convincing that we could tackle also fields different from the ones already undertaken to that moment.
Other satisfactions that helped us to overcome difficult times, have been, as an example, seeing that many people grew in a market niche that 38 years ago didn’t exist and that today is a reality, or the surprising recognitions, the results already achieved by the Haloclean project or, again, to create a new product obtaining the favour of the market, that is the pleasure that your idea is shared.
D – SEA MARCONI, under the point of view of the average age of the personnel, is undoubtedly a very young company (35 years average). What suggestions you could give to whom has married your cause with commitment and dedication and is today in your staff?
R – I must state that mine was a responsible decision. I chose my job and I am fully satisfied. The leverages that should touch all persons, independently form their role, are the will to measure themselves and others, the passion for doing well, to constantly grow and improve.
D – what are the columns supporting the Company with respect to 38 years ago?
R – Undoubtedly Human resources, that is the men and women that represent the strategic side of the future, that does not depend upon a single person, but on a working team, the capacity of creating new ideas and to share a common vision, the passion, the determination in achieving defined results
After all, however, a more or less large organisation is measured by the success of the company, with the achievement of a shared objective.
Today, a scrupulous care for the aspects relative to Quality in the company dominate, seen as a value and common force. I appreciate the attention and the effort provided to work condition safety. I consider positively the awareness together with the maturity with which my co-workers challenge environmental challenges.
I cooperate daily with anew generation of people, more aggressive and more adapted to today’s challenges. Many have become parents recently, thus they feel the duty and the responsibility of assuring a better future for their children and the responsibility of being the protagonist of the constant renewal process toward a Sustainable Development since “we are not the product of the environment in which we live and work”.
D – What features should your ideal company have and what is missing to Sea Marconi to be it?
R – Till today, a lot has been done, but there are still large margins for improvement.
It is necessary to think that each Country is our market, to reason according the requirements and the opportunities of that market. It is necessary to increase further the volumes of services and products we offer, to provide a Sea Marconi “solution” in each Country.
It is necessary to constantly challenge ourselves being less in love with the good things we have done so far, but being stimulated by the challenges of tomorrow.
The satisfactions that the Haloclean BTEX project is surely going to be given us are still to come,
Biomasses to Energy eXperience, “x” seen not as a mystery, but as a multiplier of applications in this sector. The first stages of the project are very encouraging, also through the important synergies obtained by the 5-year cooperation agreement with the most qualified and large European Research Centre (over 3,500 people) FZK (Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe)
