This is how Lucia Cristina Piu, President of Catas, comments on the 2023 results of Europe’s most important wood-furniture testing organisation. A second mandate, hers, which undoubtedly marks a season of great activity and ferment, full of important projects for the future…
“Catas continues on its successful path, from every point of view: 2023 ended with excellent results, both in terms of the number of tests performed for customers all over the world, over 50 thousand, and from an economic-financial point of view, with a turnover that is still growing compared to the 7 million euros of 2022. Profits are always reinvested in equipment and laboratories, guaranteeing the solidity and continuous technical updating of a reality that today employs about sixty people. An extremely competent and close-knit team that has always been the most important capital of Catas, thanks to which in its long history it has been able to accompany companies in the sector, becoming a worldwide reference point. An excellence whose deep roots start from the Friulian chair but have allowed this great tree to expand in many directions, entering other fields: an ability to put equipment, people and skills at the disposal of different sectors that will certainly be one of the pillars on which the programmes for the year that has just begun are based. We are in fact convinced that Catas can and must not only express its full potential in the wood and wood derivatives sector, but that it can also demonstrate its full capacity in other worlds… I am thinking of mechanics, the plastics or composite materials industries, which could be a new starting point for a path of development at national and international level.
A 2023 that has therefore given a lot of satisfaction to the Friuli-based laboratory, which in the last twelve months has not only further consolidated its positions in Italy, thanks also to the Lissone (Monza Brianza) site and the Catas Point in Pesaro, but has also invested in an even more significant presence at international level.
“The perspective of Catas has always been international,” comments Piu, “and in 2023 this vocation was underlined by our first participation in a major international trade fair, which allowed us to meet many operators from all over the world. For us, this is of absolute value not only in terms of acquiring new customers and consolidating relations with important companies from other countries, which today account for around 30 per cent of our customers, but also as an important opportunity for comparison, verification, gathering information and knowledge on new processes and materials that then become the heritage not only of the laboratory, but also of all the companies with which we collaborate‘.
A world that also asks Catas to preside over the segment of training offerings: markets and processes in profound and continuous evolution require companies to be able to count on people who have precise skills and who can increase their quality through continuous training courses.
“Catas Academy is based on a heritage of skills that it is imperative to pass on in markets where products must measure themselves against increasingly stringent standards, imposing increasingly strict limits on quality, sustainability and safety. A principle that is also the basis of our relations with the world of education, from technical institutes to universities, both locally (University of Trieste and Udine) and nationally, from the Milan Polytechnic to the University of Florence.
On the subject of sustainability, I would like to emphasise that Catas is working on drafting its own ‘Sustainability Report’, a focus on the environment, the territory, and conscious consumption that is also being realised through the creation of the first regional Energy Community, a reality that would see us at the forefront’.
“And it is no coincidence,” the Catas president continues, “that among the watchwords for 2024 is the need to measure the environmental impact of a product or service through the LCA-Life Cycle Assessment protocol. Let us not forget that in a few years, in 2027, there will be no good or product that does not have to carry a real ‘environmental passport’ certifying its ‘goodness’ in terms of resource use”.
Important projects, which require important choices, not the least of which is the need for new spaces at the San Giovanni al Natisone site: “We are working on a hypothesis of expansion, new spaces that are precious for the growth of the laboratory and that will be at the service of everyone, including the educational and professional realities that may need laboratories where they can complete training courses, perhaps with a fleet of machinery that is adequate for the current state of the art of technology“.
