By Michele Brambilla – 17 October 2022
The invention of a small chemical company in the province of Reggio Emilia renders all the viruses and bacteria that land on surfaces inert. Thus the feat of Gianluca Falleti for the 2022 is 2023 it is the first in Italy in its sector for economic growth and the fourth in Europe
The end of February 2020. There are three people on a plane that is returning from Barcelona to Italy: in the sense of three in all. Only three passengers because, even if the measures to close everything have not yet been taken, the world is already stopping. We come across words and acronyms hitherto unknown to almost everyone, and then in other obsolete words, and then again in other removed: coronavirus, Sars-CoV-2, Covid-19, lockdown, Ffp2, red zones, pulse oximeter, hydroxychloroquine, Epidemic, pandemic. We discover a feeling that not even our wartime grandparents had known, accustomed as they were to the hard life: let's get acquainted with fear. Collective fear. And what scares more than what is new and unknown? The virus is more unknown than bombs, the Spanish flu and the plague are memories of past generations. The world will end? We will go extinct? We are all thinking about this as that plane returns to Italy loaded with only three passengers.
One of these three returning from Barcelona is called Gianluca Falleti, at that moment it has 44 years, was born in Sassuolo and is the owner of a small company he founded in 2000: la Nanoprom Chemicals. Five employees, a beautiful headquarters in the industrial area of Casalgrande, in the province of Reggio Emilia, fraction of Sant'Antonino, on the border with the ceramic district of Sassuolo. In short, we are in one of those corners of the peninsula that make our GDP rise so much.
The company produces very thin glass which is "doped" with various materials to be adapted to the most sophisticated technological devices; does cold vitrification; invents and produces the “lightest” paints in the world. A Formula car 1, to say, is painted with 250 grams if opaque and 300 grams if shiny. For a Curti helicopter of Castel Bolognese, eight kilos of paint was once needed, enough now 800 grams of the product designed and supplied by Nanoprom. Lightweight glass and paint: to a drone it has gone by 17 a 3,4 kilograms. And what can such a company do against Covid?
"On that plane", says Falleti, “I was thinking about what I could do to help. In Barcelona I had participated in the F1 tests and presented some plastics with our paints; they are like films that are used to color and protect the cars during the races, to prevent dust from adhering to the body, to cushion impacts with anything that may come up from the track.
“So I thought: I make a varnish to be applied to another film that protects against viruses and bacteria. But I understood that it was infeasible from a bureaucratic point of view: too many certifications were needed. I didn't give up, because I try to never stop in the face of a difficulty. I invested 330.000 euros to create a staff that would invent something to secure homes, offices, school. And I have to thank the Region, which helped me with 70.000 euro”.
And that's how BV-Stop was born: the first anti-Covid paint in the world. To be precise: anti-all-viruses, anti-all-bacteria, anti mould. “It is an invisible paint, transparent. It is applied with a spray on all paintable surfaces but also on fabrics. In order to understand each other: even in an armchair, on a pillow, on a bed. It cannot be seen and has no smell, on the contrary, it eliminates odors caused by bacteria. Thirty square meters are protected with a liter".
But how does it work? “After thirty minutes the virus dropped on a surface painted with BV-Stop becomes inert al 99,9 percent, and the bacteria are destroyed”. How can you be sure? “Con 6.700 pounds I had a lamp made in Great Britain with a light balance that, with a blue ray, allows you to see where the bacteria are, where they can be and where the paint has already passed. This checks the level of protection”. How long does this protection last? “About five years. And if it lasts less, you can go over the paint".
The BV-Stop has been on the market for a month. The first buyer was the Municipality of Casalgrande, who protected his Registry Office with this magical spray. Schools and company canteens have also ordered it. A large hospital in Turin is evaluating it. For now this paint is unique in the world: a patent application was filed last year and no objections are reported, which is considered a good sign. Meanwhile the company has grown from five to nine employees and the turnover has risen to two million seven hundred thousand euros a year. According to the Financial Times ranking, the small Nanoprom Chemicals of Casalgrande, Province of Reggio Emilia, for the 2022 is 2023 it is the first Italian chemical company and the fourth in Europe for economic growth.
In short, this is a story of Italian genius. A story of those "how to turn a crisis into an opportunity". But if you say this phrase, Falleti glares at you.
“I have not used Covid to earn money or to grow the company, I assure you. My father in law died of Covid. And faced with this planetary tragedy, I thought if I could lend a hand in my own small way, if I could come up with something. I was wondering: but i really can't do anything? We are truly powerless in the face of this enemy so tiny as to be invisible? What can I do to help? When the news of the first lockdown arrived, I was skiing in the mountains. I remember everyone's sense of dread. I felt a huge emptiness. I have two sons, and above all those who have children were afraid.
“When we developed the anti-Covid paint, I wanted to be sure it really worked. I had it tested by three companies and universities in three different cities: Modena, Firenze, Chieti. Only when all three of them gave me the certification did I start…”. to sell it? “To give it away. I told him, it has only been on the market for a month. First I donated it to the Sassuolo Red Cross, of Scandiano, of Maranello and Casalgrande. They protected the ambulances with BV-Stop. Then I moved on to schools. They asked me to protect them from Covid with my paint, and I asked: but how long has it been since you whitened? In a school near us, which I won't name, they answered me: from 1984. He realizes in what condition the Italian school is? But she knows he paints them, after a few years, they become cancerous if they are not removed and replaced? If you don't whiten the old walls? I answered those who asked me about the BV-Stop: first whiten, then i pass it. And I assure you that I could have immediately earned hundreds of thousands of euros if I had ignored it, and passed my anti Covid paint on those walls last painted in 1984. Today any municipality can use European funds against Covid to have all the classrooms repainted, and then prepare for the BV-Stop.
“Making money with Covid? There are those who made them. There are many who have marched on it. That's why I left, here in our area, the anti-looting project. When they sold surgical masks for two or three euros each, I gave away more than a hundred thousand. And the ones I sold, I sold them to 50 cents each, well before this was the state-mandated price. If then a family had three children, the third had a free mask, and for the first two the price was forty cents".
Even on the masks, the small Nanoprom has tried to innovate. “I produced masks with a particular fabric: 45 percent cellulose e 55 percent polyester. With these masks, the water is completely absorbed and the virus becomes inert in eight hours: so you don't even need to incinerate them. You can throw them away in the regular trash. They gave us the Open Innovation award of small and medium-sized enterprises, for these masks.
Now Falleti is aiming for the recognition of Nanoprom as a B-Corp company, that is, to be certified as a company that, as well as chasing profit, has high standards of social and environmental performance. “Il 15 December last year we received the patent as the only company in the world that is offering an alternative to the use of galvanic, which forces them to be disposed of in special waste. We launched the Nalucoat project, which means to use, instead of galvanic, another technology and materials that can be recycled one hundred percent. Our business lies in research and development: companies come to us with requests, and we study how to help them. We work with the Formula 1 and with Moto GP, with boating, with drones, with all: from submarines to satellites”.
The magic paint will work? It will really eliminate Covid, and all other viruses, and all bacteria, and all the bad smells in homes, offices, factories, hospitals and cars? The patent will arrive that will certify yet another Italian miracle? Meanwhile, this is a story of Italian genius. And where does our genius come from? Pupi Avati, great director, he says from having suffered and knowing how to react. “I have lost both parents since I was thirteen”, says Falleti. “As a boy I was an insurer, I delivered pizzas and washed cars. I've tried sneaking sleep in insurance company bathrooms. In a 21 I haven't bought a car in years: I bought myself a house”.
We are about to go out. Ask us: “He needs to go to the bathroom?" Why not, at my age. “Ecco, then I show her what happens before and after using a toilet”. Then he enters with his magic lantern, which by lighting up blue shows us where the bacteria are, where there is the protection of its anti-virus and anti-bacteria paint, and where instead we still have to pass it. He is happy like a child. Because he invented something to make money? Who knows these entrepreneurs, he knows it's not the gain (which is also needed, yes, and that's right) to make those who undertake a work happy. It is the feeling that something new has been done, it is the feeling that one has done something useful for others. “What I told her is the 5 percent of what this company has done”, he says as he accompanies us to the parking lot. His company is among those classified in the "Growth Leaders 2022" category compiled by the Sun 24 Ore, with a growth rate of 54,76 percent.
Ecco, as long as there are people like that, enough to talk about a finite country. Stop crying.
[Source: https://www.ilfoglio.it/]
