In Foza stands Rigoni di Asiago's first production facility. Here honey, fruit and hazelnuts are transformed into the products that have made the brand famous, not only in Italy.
At around 1,000 metres above sea level stands Rigoni di Asiago's first and most important production facility. Here even the names of the hamlets derive from the ancient language once spoken throughout these valleys: Cimbrian.
It was on these slopes that the Rigoni family, as far back as the 1920s, began producing honey. Over time the family business grew and began producing jams as well. Since the 1990s the Group has been producing and marketing jams made with organic fruit and sweetened with organic apple juice, Nocciolata and fruit juices. The company today owns its own supply chain and therefore oversees every stage of the production process, from the cultivation of raw materials through to the packaging of the finished product.
The strawberry jam fresh off the production line. Photo Rudi Bressa/LifeGate
The moment you step inside the production facility, you feel enveloped by the scent of strawberries and freshly made jam. Across three floors — offices, laboratories and the production line itself — 42 employees work.
Here the fruit arrives directly from farms in Italy and from the company's own production areas in Bulgaria, where Rigoni grows some of its own fruit, all strictly organic. What's more, many of the berries used — blueberries and raspberries above all, but also elderberries — come from wild harvesting.
"When it arrives at our facility, the fruit is checked piece by piece," says Marina Panozzo, Rigoni's quality and research and development manager. "We then move from visual inspection to sorting the fruit by size and colour, so that the final product is uniform and consistent."
From the fruit, which follows a low-temperature process all the way through to the pasteurisation stage — precisely in order to preserve the fruit's nutritional properties intact — we move to the honey, where the entire processing takes place at room temperature. The honey turns out just as it was when freshly harvested.
But the company's sustainability journey goes beyond the careful selection of raw materials. "Energy production also takes place in a sustainable way," Maria Panozzo emphasises. The electricity used in the company's processes is generated partly from photovoltaics and partly from wind power. The facility is equipped with a cogeneration plant, which allows for considerable energy savings. "We also monitor energy consumption across our systems, so that we can track the facility's consumption in real time and make improvements wherever necessary."
Water also plays an important role at Rigoni: "The water used in the process is purified and returned to the cycle, so as to reduce waste and consumption," Panozzo continues.
At the Foza facility, around 6,000 tonnes of fruit are processed in a fully automated, computer-controlled cycle. Here every step is recorded to ensure the traceability of the raw materials used. "We work 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. On average, across the various formats and product lines, we produce 7,500 jars per hour. Around 700,000 jars a week," explains Cristina Cossa, Rigoni's marketing manager. "In 2015 we produced around 33 million jars."
There is a great deal of the company's philosophy in every jar of Fiordifrutta, of Miele italiano, of Nocciolata. A philosophy that speaks of raw material quality, of sustainable production processes, and of a deep respect for the land.