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UNIC – Concerie Italiane, the most important and organised association in the tanning sector worldwide, through its subsidiary Lineapelle S.r.l., acquired a stake in SprintItaly, which it will incorporate through a merger SICIT, with consequent admission of the latter to the multilateral trading system AIM Italia of Borsa Italiana. The stake held by the UNIC-Lineapelle Group should be around 2% of the voting share capital of the post-merger company.

Today, UNIC represents about 1,200 companies, with a total of about 18,000 employees and a turnover of about 5 billion Euros, 76% of which for export. The Italian tanning industry is an historical and consolidated example of circular economy, as it removes a large quantity of waste from the slaughtering industry (animal remains), significantly reducing the environmental impact, creating an high-added product with technical characteristics and performance of the highest level, maintained over time.

Gianni Russo, Chairman of UNIC – Concerie Italiane and Lineapelle, said: “The acquisition of a stake in SICIT is a proof of our confidence in the future of the sector and is fully in line with the strategic goals of the association, authoritative and attentive partner of the Italian tanneries in their path towards a continuous development of sustainability, with increasingly investments“.

Massimo Neresini, CEO of SICIT, added: “The investment of UNIC – Concerie Italiane represents an important endorsement of SICIT’s green business model, which makes us proud and can only reassure the financial markets about the quality of their investment. Moreover, this decision also proves the quality of the work we have done over the years, allowing us to further strengthen our presence on international markets“.

SICIT strengthened its partnership with Bayer with reference to two products for the global market: AmbitionTM and BayfolanTM Cobre. The two brands, currently distributed respectively in Brazil and India, will soon be introduced, once the registration stage is completed, also in Asia (China) and in the other Latin American countries.

The collaboration between the two companies is further strengthened, after the signing of the exclusive distribution agreement in July 2017, which guaranteed to Bayer the worldwide distribution of BayfolanTM Cobre and BayfolanTM Aktivator for foliar use in various crops, as well as the development of formulations based on some well-known SICIT technologies in the treatment of amino acids and peptides of animal origin.

Hartmut van Lengerich, head of the Crop Protection division of Bayer, said: “Biostimulants strengthen our portfolio of crop protection products: they are a complementary tool in our integrated crop management program that helps farmers worldwide improve perfromance and crop quality in a sustainable manner“.

Crops suffer from a wide range of stress: solutions such as AmbitionTM and BayfolanTM Cobre stimulate plant growth and improve their natural defences against these stresses.

Oreste Odelli, Managing Director with responsibility for SICIT’s sales activities, commented: “The strengthening of our collaboration with Bayer is a recognition of the quality of the work done by SICIT and will allow us to further improve our presence in international markets. We were among the first in the world to introduce, in the 1960s, biostimulants for agriculture based on amino acids and peptides, and we still provide innovative solutions that make farming more and more sustainable“.

Biostimulants based on amino acids and peptides of animal origin are increasingly used in agriculture and horticulture, and are at the centre of growing global interest as they enable sustainable and environmentally friendly production. In particular, they combat abiotic stress, improve crop quality and performance and promote soil microflora renewal: for these reasons, products containing amino acids can be used in organic agriculture in Europe, Latin America and Asia.

SprintItaly held the Extraordinary and Ordinary Shareholders’ Meeting of the Company to pass resolutions regarding the business combination with SICIT 2000 S.p.A.
The Extraordinary Shareholders’ Meeting, held in second call, in the presence of 62.38% of the ordinary share capital, by a unanimous vote of the members present, approved the Business Combination and therefore:

• the Merger plan, and the new text of the Articles of Association governing the company resulting from the Merger (the “Combined Entity”) subject to, and as from, the date on which the Merger becomes effective to third parties;
• the distribution of SprintItaly’s reserves to its ordinary and special shareholders, for an amount equal to the resources available to the Company in excess of those necessary for the Business Combination (€ 100 million) following the liquidation of any ordinary shares subject to withdrawal, i.e. for a maximum of € 50 million;
• the grouping of all the ordinary and special shares of SprintItaly according to a grouping ratio such that the implicit value of the shares after the grouping is equal to Euro 10.00 each, also due to the outcome of the withdrawal and the distribution of reserves.

The merger plan was also approved by the Extraordinary Shareholders’ Meeting of SICIT on 28 February 2019, which also passed the necessary resolutions for the purposes of the Business Combination and the preliminary operations as envisaged by the Merger plan.

Massimo Neresini, CEO of SICIT, said: “We are satisfied with this result. The combination with SprintItaly and the consequent listing will increase our visibility on the world markets and will allow us to accelerate a well-defined medium/long term industrial project, in high growth sectors linked to macro-trends“.

Gerardo Braggiotti, Chairman of the Board of Directors of SprintItaly, added: “We thank our investors for having been able to appreciate the quality and potential of the target identified. SICIT is a leading company, unique in its kind, which globally supplies the main players of the agronomic, agrochemical and industrial sectors; with a ‘green’ business model, based on the circular economy as well as with a growth rate, an international coverage and an economic-financial performance perfectly in line with the ideal profile that we had proposed during the IPO“.