Coca-Cola HBC Italia appoints Paolo Eminente as new director of the Nogara (VR) plant

The Legnaga native will lead the largest Coca-Cola HBC production site in Italy and the first in Europe in terms of production capacity, with a strong vocation for sustainability.

Nogara, 21 March 2023 – Coca-Cola HBC Italia, the main bottler of The Coca-Cola Company brand products in Italy, has appointed Paolo Eminente as Plant Manager of the Nogara (VR) plant.

Paolo Eminente will have the task of leading the plant, an important industrial reality present in the area for over 40 years, with particular attention to improving production performance and sustainability, as well as the development of the workforce.

Eminente, 45 years old, from Legnago (VR), started his career in Coca-Cola HBC Italia in 1997, first within the Quality department and then in Manufacturing, until he held the position of Production Manager. Since 2016 he has continued his career outside the borders of the Veneto region, first as Environment Manager and then as Engineering Manager, providing an important contribution to numerous projects, including the rebirth of the Coca-Cola HBC plant in Gaglianico (BI) which has become an innovative plant for the production of recycled plastic preforms (rPET).

"I am happy to return to Nogara and realize the dream I had when, at the age of nineteen, I had my first job in the company. Over the years, I have seen the plant and its people grow, which are now a flagship not only in Italy, but also within the Coca-Cola HBC Group," comments Paolo Eminente, Plant Manager of the Nogara (VR) plant . "I will make all my skills and enthusiasm available to consolidate the excellent performance of the site, especially in the field of sustainability".

The Nogara plant is in fact a positive example of industrial innovation and environmental sustainability; the continuous investments – over 20 million euros in the last three years alone – have been aimed at accelerating the transition to an increasingly circular economy, starting with interventions on primary and secondary packaging: in Nogara  , bottles are produced with 100% recycled plastic (rPET) and, in 2022, it was the first Coca-Cola HBC Italia site to produce caps joined to bottles (Tethered Caps), anticipating the European Directive on Single-Use Plastics.  

The protection of water resources is also a priority of the company's sustainability strategy. For this reason, in 2021, the site obtained Gold level certification from the Alliance For Water Stewardship (AWS) standard, thus further committing itself to the objectives of protecting water resources, while in the last 10 years, the plant has reduced its use of water per liter of beverage produced by more than 14%. As with all Coca-Cola HBC Italia plants, a further commitment to safeguarding water resources translates into the creation of "water teams", groups of colleagues in charge of guaranteeing the water supply by monitoring consumption and at the same time identifying projects for saving the resource, with a view to constant improvement from an environmental impact point of view.