Guala Closures Group, founded in Italy in 1954, sells more than 15 billion caps and closures in more than 100 countries every year. In 2017, the group chose Luxembourg as the location for its innovation centre specialising in new technologies.
“Innovation is clearly part of our DNA,” explains Piero Cavigliasso, the director of the group’s technological innovation department, who oversees operations at Technoport de Foetz.
From the very beginning of the activity of the Guala Closures R&D centre in Luxembourg, two projects were initiated within a few months: Flexcap (a novel magneto-forming technology for the design of capsules) and Smartcap (with the installation, in the capsule itself, of an electronic chip on which a certain amount of information about the product contained in the bottle is displayed).
For the first project, carried out in collaboration with the University of Luxembourg, the support of the Ministry of the Economy was €890,000. For the second, in which two Italian research centres are also involved, Guala Closures received an additional €422,000 in funding.
This shows to what extent the group has found, in Luxembourg, a favourable ground for its development. “Government support is very important here. We were pleasantly surprised by their efficiency and quick availability of funds,” says Cavigliasso. “In addition, Luxinnovation’s support helped us understand how the aid schemes work and guided us in the preparation of our files. We do not like to waste time unnecessarily and such support is very valuable.
Guala Closures obviously does not intend to stop there and the group is already working on other projects, in particular within the framework of the Composite Industry Luxembourg consortium, in collaboration with the List, to develop capsules in biological and composite materials.