New governance and a new board of directors for Sirmax Group, the Cittadella (Padua, Italy) based company specialising in the production of thermoplastic resins, led by President and CEO Massimo Pavin. The new five-member executive board includes Massimo Pavin and his brother Roberto, Chief Financial Officer (CFO), as well as his brother Vittorio, formerly Commercial Director of the Household Appliances sector, and two external directors: Alessandro Minichilli, a professor at the Department of Management and Technology of the Bocconi University of Milan and an expert in the processes of succession, transition and managerialization of family businesses, and Mauro Fenzi, current General Manager of Sacmi in Imola, who boasts solid technological experience, gained in the automotive and industrial automation systems development fields.
The 2023/25 Business Plan
Prior to the new appointments, Sirmax's Board of Directors launched the new 2023-2025 business plan, at the same time as preparing the 2022 financial statements. Over the next three years, the company of polypropylene compounds, technopolymers, post-consumer compounds and bio-compounds, the ideal material for flexible and rigid packaging, will continue the lines of development already started in the previous plan and make new investments of around EUR 20 million. This is a continuation of investments made in previous industrial plans, increased production capacity, digital transformation and investments in sustainability. A specific investment will be made in India, where the expansion of the production site in Palwal (Delhi) is planned.
In the 2023-25 plan, the grounding of investments in intangibles will also continue. In 2023, the 'Aurora project' has already been launched, which alone is worth about EUR 10 million in R&D investments - also using funds from the National Plan for Complementary Investments of the NRP - and which aims at upcycling and transforming polypropylene from urban waste collection into a new generation of high-performance compounds through the development of an advanced production system. This project will implement the production of new compounds containing at least 30% recycled polypropylene from flexible films from municipal waste collection, with such high performance that they can be used in injection moulding.
Other plans are being developed: with Deloitte, a project is being studied for an integrated supply chain, involving people, processes and tools, and a different methodology for management control, more reliable and faster, to increase the ability to forecast and make business decisions more quickly, consistent with the speed that the volatile market imposes. Another important project concerns Human Resources and involves a policy of employee retention and the attraction of new talent.
Underpinning all Sirmax Group's initiatives is sustainability as a mindset, through tools such as the Sustainability Report, certifications (e.g. Great Place to Work) and internal actions aimed at a change of focus towards the parameters that will allow us to remain competitive in the market.
Budget 2022
The board of directors of the Sirmax Group also approved the 2022 budget figures and the figures for the first quarter of 2023. 2022 ended by surpassing the €500m turnover mark (€501m), up more than 7 per cent from €467m in 2021, while EBITDA stood at €30m. The best-performing areas were Brazil, with a turnover growth of 50%, mainly due to new market shares in the automotive sector, and India, which recorded a 30% increase, again due to new market shares, not only in the automotive but also in the household appliance and tool sectors. In both cases, the company is reaping the benefits of significant investments made in research and development. With regard to business units, the incidence of the green segment (recycled compounds + bio-compounds) is growing, reaching 10% of turnover in 2022 with a production capacity ready to support the growth expected by the market.
As far as the first quarter of 2023 is concerned, the figures are in line with the forecasts: around 60,000 tonnes of product sold, a turnover of EUR 115 million and an EBITDA of around EUR 8 million.
For Sirmax, 2022 was a year divided in half: in the first half of the year the trend was more than positive, in the second half of the year, on the other hand, energy costs, the inflationary pressure and consequently the slowdown in investments weighed in addition to the drop in demand for durable goods such as household appliances. 2023 will be a transition year, pending a more structured recovery in 2024.
