BERGAMO – Italian textiles manufacturer, Radici Group, says it has reduced its overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 70 per cent over the last decade. The business, which is now targeting an 80 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030, says it cut GHG emissions from about 700,000 metric tons per year to 200,000 tons between 2011 and 2020.
Radici provides a wide range of products for textile value chains, including chemical intermediates, polyamide polymers, high performance engineering polymers and advanced textile solutions. The company is precisely the kind of supply chain intermediary which fashion brands are focused on as they look to reduce Tier 2 emissions.
Radici said the main GHG reductions were achieved through actions at its Specialty Chemicals Business Area at its plants in Novara, Italy, and in Germany, which are the heart of Radici Group’s chemicals business. Here the Group produces an essential intermediate for synthesizing polyamide 66, adipic acid, whose production process releases nitrous oxide as a by-product. Nitrous oxide in itself is not particularly problematic but, if it is released into the atmosphere, it has a much higher GHG effect than carbon dioxide.
At the Radici Chimica site in Novara, a multiyear investment budget of over ten million Euros was dedicated to lowering these emissions through three undertakings. In 2004, it introduced a three catalyst bed reactor, designed and patented by the company, to decompose nitrous oxide into nitrogen and oxygen, the two elements it is composed of, thus making it innocuous for the atmosphere. In 2013, the business installed an EnviNOx plant to decrease the release of nitrous oxide formed in the production of nitric acid. In 2021, a further improvement was made to its emissions abatement system associated with nitric acid production.
The business said that since activating the last plant nine months ago, more than 35,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent have been cut. All the above-mentioned actions have enabled Radici Chimica Novara to record a nitrous oxide emissions level less than 10 ppm (parts per million), a value close to zero.