Here is the interview to our General Manager, Giuseppe Visentini, published on Il Piccolo, Trieste’s main newspaper.
ThermoKey’s growth was possible thanks to its commitment to sustainability since 2011, and to its investment in products with a low environmental impact, which made it the only Italian company manufacturing recyclable aluminium remote condensers that require 70% less refrigerant.
Heat Exchangers made in Friuli Venezia Giulia are used to cool Dutch greenhouses.
30 years after its foundation, ThermoKey is experiencing a new period of growth. Ongoing research collaboration with the university of Trieste.
With its technology entirely made in Friuli Venezia Giulia, collaborations with the universities of Udine and Trieste, and a growth of 39% compared to 2014, the Friulian company ThermoKey is preparing to celebrate its 30th anniversary in 2020 with an important increase in terms of turnover and order portfolio.
Founded in December 1990 and based in Rivarotta, a small town in the Udine province, ThermoKey specializes in the design and manufacture of heat-exchange solutions and it operates in 56 countries. Its turnover reached 32 million euros in 2019, and the first quarter of 2020 started with a 6% increase in the order portfolio, compared to the same period of the previous year.
“Just as an example, in recent years the range of ThermoKey’s exchangers has been used for the conditioning of three stadiums for the football world cup in Russia, for the cooling of huge data centers used for the storage of our digital data in northern Europe, and for the temperature control of large Dutch greenhouses where orchids and vegetables are grown”, says Giuseppe Visentini, engineer and General Manager of the company since 2014. “At the time, ThermoKey was emerging from a period of crisis, which it overcome thanks to a change in management, a recapitalization and a credible plan for suppliers and banks – Mr. Visentini explains. We chose to focus all our energies on the skills that have historically been present in our area. When the crisis was overcome, thanks to the level of services and reliability of our products, we have started to grow steadily.
Today, the company has 170 employees and it is facing new challenges that affect the entire market and mainly concern environmental protection. “We are strongly committed to the development of technologies which, allowing the same level of performance, allow to reduce the traditional refrigerant volumes used in the exchangers. We also aim to offer solutions that promote the use of the new green refrigerants, which are gases that are difficult to manage – underlines the General Manager.
In short, on the one hand it is a question of reducing the refrigerant charge, and, on the other, of certifying that the unit is able to safely manage new and traditional refrigerants.
Concerning research and innovation, ThermoKey has invested in the development of products with a low environmental impact, becoming the only European company to produce remote condensers made of recyclable aluminum and which require 70% less refrigerant gas.
“We have an ongoing collaboration with the Trieste university, coordinated by Professor Marco Manzan, in the context of the regional project HEAD – says Visentini.
A university research fellow is working on thermodynamic simulations for the development of a low environmental impact refrigeration system, namely a Gas Cooler for cycles with carbon dioxide”.
The company is also involved as a supplier in the Iter project (Internationa thermonuclear experimental reactor), financed for about 50% by Europe and in which stakeholders from the USA, China, India, Japan, Russia and South Korea are participating.
The project aims to create a 15-billion euros nuclear reactor based on the same principle that allows stars to produce energy: ThermoKey’s technology was chosen to control the temperature of the mechanisms of the future reactor.