A new step forward in the redevelopment of the former sugar factory in Comacchio: last Friday, during a joint press conference, GH Energy, part of the FRI-EL Green Power group, officially announced that it had signed an option to purchase the site, the first step in an ambitious sustainable redevelopment project.

SIPRO, a key player in the process, actively participates in the institutional round table promoted by the Emilia-Romagna Region, together with other local partners, to support the definition and implementation of the development plan.

The project, which has already been presented to the joint committee, involves the construction of a photovoltaic park integrated with environmental mitigation measures, including new equipped green areas, a cycle path and a multifunctional hub that will house, among other things, the future Centre for Applied Ecology of the University of Ferrara.

The initiative is part of a broader vision of sustainable development and productive regeneration already launched by FRI-EL in the area, with the experience of the hydroponic greenhouses in San Giovanni di Ostellato, and aims to restore economic, environmental and social centrality to an area that is currently disused but highly strategic.

The Emilia-Romagna Region and the Municipality of Comacchio have expressed their full support for the proposal, recognising its transformative potential for the future of the area.

A visit to the two incubators managed by Sipro-Agenzia per lo Sviluppo, one in Cassana and the other in Saragat, near the Tecnopolo. This is the one made by the Sole Administrator, Paolo Govoni, in recent days .

A cognitive meeting but also a prospective one, “in order to create a network between the established realities, all of which are high-tech and included in national markets and beyond”.

We refer about Cassana of: Intercom Sistemi (communications, IT, technological installations), CFS Studio (security training and consulting), Arda Solutions (corporate IT infrastructure management and cybersecurity).

About Saragat by: Makros (archival systems for heritage protection), Mama Science (synthesis of advanced, sustainable and non-toxic biomaterials), GATE Green (biotechnology in sanitation), MechVib Engineering (scientific research applied to mechanics and vibration analysis).

“In my idea of development, reiterated Govoni, also in continuity with his role as Vice-President of the Ferrara-Ravenna Chamber of Commerce. there is the intention to create relations between the incubators and local businesses, also through trade associations. There are many productive realities that might need services developed within the incubators, which moreover have direct relations with Unife. A front, that of the University, with which I intend, as Sipro, to strengthen relations.”

Giada Spadoni, Head of Incubators and European Projects at Sipro, attended the meetings.

SIPRO is a stakeholder of the University of Ferrara in the European project COLOURS – European University Alliance, which involves nine universities across Europe with the aim of promoting shared strategies for local development, community and entrepreneurship.

On Wednesday, 10 July 2025, starting at 9.30 a.m., a delegation from the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM) – a partner in the project – will visit the SIPRO Incubator in Saragat street to learn more about SIPRO’s role in supporting innovative and sustainable entrepreneurship and the synergies activated with the University of Ferrara.

During the meeting, the start-up support model adopted by SIPRO will be presented and some experiences of companies established in the incubator will be recounted, testifying to the growth path and the value generated by the collaboration between territory, university and enterprise.

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From Bologna to Ferrara, from Le Serre ART-ER to the network of incubators of Sipro- Agenzia Provinciale per lo Sviluppo. It is Mama Science, one of the start-ups recently established in Via Saragat . Strengthened by the requirements of innovation, scalability, business replicability and the ability to enter international markets, after months of discussions, it chose Sipro incubators to make the “leap”.

This leap is also taking place thanks to the StartupER project – divided into pre-incubation, incubation and acceleration paths – managed by Sipro and Gate Real Estate Innovation, with UNIFE as lead partner, for which Mama Science has been selected for the acceleration segment along with four other start-ups.

Precisely because acceleration includes realities that are already on the market and ready for an advanced growth phase, Mama Science will bring its own testimony on Thursday 26 June to Investor Day, an initiative organised and coordinated by ART-ER as part of the R2B Fair in Bologna, which has been a reference event for those doing innovation for years.

Founded by Marco Marchetti, who is its CEO, Mama Science deals with materials synthesis. A field in which experimentation – with an in-house laboratory for applied research – is fundamental. With its own patented process, Mama Science produces products – sprays, liquids, in different solutions – used by industry, no product sector excluded. They range from construction to agriculture, from biomedical to electronics, and from conservation to packaging. ‘In fact,’ Marchetti explains, “we are meeting environmental sustainability requirements that go beyond the concept of reuse and the need for companies to have new “products”. This, pandering to the demands of consumers who are increasingly attentive to physical, environmental, domestic, and food wholesomeness. ‘The materials we synthesise “mimic” nature’.

Satisfaction from Paolo Govoni, Sole Director Sipro. ‘As Sipro, we are characterising ourselves as a great competitive incubator, capable of attracting more and more start-ups with new projects that the market strongly needs, in which the component of creativity and human ingenuity generate a value available to companies and the territory’. Words confirmed by Giada Spadoni, Sipro Incubators and European Projects Manager. “Our incubators are increasingly hosting highly innovative start-ups capable of evolving into enterprises. Marchetti explains the choice of Ferrara: “Support from Sipro, proximity with the Faculty of Engineering – with which we intend to collaborate – logistics, thanks to the proximity of motorway junctions. For us, a strategic condition’. .

A handshake to designate the passing of the baton in the name of continuity, collaboration and the future of the territory. This was the one that took place yesterday morning, at the Municipality’s Sala Arengo, at the end of the shareholders’ meeting of Sipro – Development Agency, between the outgoing Sole Director, Stefano di Brindisi, and Paolo Govoni, Vice-President of the Ferrara-Ravenna Chamber of Commerce, who officially succeeds him as of now.

With the presence of more than 89 per cent of the shareholders, the financial and management balance sheet closed on 31 December was approved. On the proposal of Luca Cimarelli, President of Ferrara Tua, Sipro’s majority shareholder, the extension of the company’s duration until 2032 was approved. A fundamental step that, explained Cimarelli and the competent councillor, Matteo Fornasini, also envisages the remodelling of the company statute and the need, for Sipro, ‘to change skin by reviewing governance’. It is in this context that Govoni will operate, strong in association experience first in CNA and at the top of the Chamber of Commerce, and for this reason “an expert in the business world”. This was the endorsement from the President of the Province, Daniele Garuti, who indicated him. And while words of esteem and appreciation for the work carried out over the two terms of office were expressed by both Cimarelli and Fornasini, who acknowledged Brindisi’s ‘to have worked through difficult years, bringing results confirmed by numbers’ (presented at a press conference on Tuesday and summarised in a mandate profit of EUR 1 million and several earmarked for projects in the area), Brindisi himself closed by recalling that the management of public affairs “requires a great sense of responsibility and care. The same that Govoni will certainly employ, to whom I am bound by a relationship of esteem and to whom I wish good work’..

“From Ferrara to the whole world to protect our history from fires, earthquakes and floods’. So begins the article that startupitalia.eu, a prestigious online magazine focused on innovation, dedicated to Makros and its CEO Massimo Luise.

Located within the Sipro incubator in via Saragat, Makros is a company that has based its activity on the preservation of cultural heritage by patenting BlockFire (the first of seven current patents), a protective, flame- and heat-resistant compact storage system, with a focus on design, environments, and the material to be stored. This is precisely why in October 2023 Makros was recognised as one of the 100 Italian excellences in the fourth Report 100 Italian Cultural Spaces Stories promoted by the Symbola Foundation and Fossa Bortolo, with a focus on museums and thus on technology applied to culture.

As explained in the article, the company protects parchments, paintings and works of art, ranging from thirteen kilometres in the central state archive in Rome to twelve metres deep in the Rami Barrack library centre in Istanbul.

“The Sipro incubator is strategic for us, because it has allowed us to expand not only as a team but also in terms of ideas and designs. Today, we also collaborate with several companies that produce artefacts for us, involving around 150 people in our network”. These are Luise’s words to underline the importance of Sipro’s role in accompanying companies. Siprocube, in fact, offers well-equipped facilities for new companies: spaces ranging from 36 to 643 square metres, connections to the main utilities, and the possibility of using common areas.

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From 1 to 3 April, Poland will host the 4th Interregional Meeting of LEEWAY, a European project of which Sipro is Lead Partner.

LEEWAY aims to foster the adoption of energy policies that facilitate the development of Renewable Energy Communities through sharing and exchanging experiences between various local and regional public authorities from different EU countries (Italy, Belgium, Poland, Germany, Ukraine, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia).

Participants will attend a conference open to partners, stakeholders and ordinary citizens, focusing on the innovative Green Economy and will have the opportunity to visit the Bytom microgrid site (TAURON) and the Euro-Centrum Science and Technology Park. On the last day there will be an exchange workshop and an interregional working group to create a debate on the green and energy transition.