Lucca, 25 March 2021 Futura SpA and Cisa Production respectively take first and third place in the ranking of the public announcement promoted by Regione Toscana for “Strategic Research & Development Projects” under the Regional Operational Program of the European Regional Development Fund. An important result for Faper Group, holding of the recent winners, and further evidence of the ingenuity embedded in the group, and instilled in it by its founder Fabio Perini. With Faper Group and Fabio Perini choosing to strategically HQ each of the companies in Lucca, both Futura and Cisa are leaders in their respective fields of converting and infection control. This recognition witnesses the looking-forward with purpose approach of Faper Group and its companies and confirms the distinctive trait rooted in its identity since inception: its bond with a highly proficient territory. A tie the Group continues to cultivate with great dedication and from which its leadership, today recognized at a global level, derives, with the satisfaction of returning resources to the territory itself in terms of values and industrial networks, from employment to its contribution to the development of the socio-economic fabric. Futura will lead its project, Smart Converting 4.0: a nearly 3 million euro investment which will involve an additional 5 entities. Cisa will head its project, Medial Waste Treating 4.0, and will also invest nearly 3 million euro together with its 4 partners all of which are also operative out of region. The Regione Toscana received a total of 59 project applications and deemed 46 eligible for the grant while for the moment only 11 of the 46 eligible projects will be financed by the Region, for a total of approximately 10.5 million euro. “The project we presented – explains Piero Ceccon, CEO of Futura SpA – aims at seizing opportunities for the development of more “intelligent”, automated, integrated, reliable and safer converting lines compared to those currently available on national and international markets. The key to achieving this project lies in the introduction of artificial intelligence as a ‘ubiquitous’ means to the development of innovative solutions based on advanced automation and collaborative robotics in order to obtain superior and sustainable competitive advantages in the long term. A positioning that will allow Futura and its partners in performance to grow, increase their market shares and their abilities to create value for stakeholders, as well as generating new employment opportunities”. To explain Cisa’s Medical Waste Treating 4.0 project is Francesco Crotti, Chief Innovation Director of Cisa Production. “The project – he says – presents an innovative system for the ennobling of medical waste from an ‘End of Waste’ perspective, that is, when waste ceases to be such. In fact, Medical Waste Treating 4.0 is based on the process of ‘ennobling’ waste, and not only on waste ‘treatment’ or ‘inertization’, through the development of an innovative system designed to reclaim medical waste for its disposal as well as to giving a “second life” to the waste itself. CISA’s sterilization solutions are guaranteed by the company’s ability to constantly update its technology and re-design its products in order to offer the industry with innovative, quality and top performance equipment”.