On Thursday 11th February 2021, the award ceremony of the Best Performance Awards 2020/2021 took place, an important annual recognition, now at its fourth edition, dedicated to Italian companies that stand out for their excellence in creating economic, technological, human, social and environmental value.
Organised by SDA Bocconi School of Management, in partnership with J.P. Morgan Private Banking, PwC, the private equity fund EQT, Bureau Van Dijk, Havas PR, the Best Performance Award proclaimed the winners within the different categories.
Among the awarded companies, Saib, a company from Piacenza producing raw and melamine faced chipboard defined as RPB, Regenerated Particle Board, selected within the Hot Topic category, which won the Most Impactful Company award.

Saib: an Italian company that stands out for its business model

This award recognises Saib's business model, which is able to virtuously combine a sustainable production process with excellent economic performance and great social commitment in the area.  For more than 50 years, Saib has been run by the same family group, now in its third generation, with more than 200 employees and a turnover of 120 million Euro. Saib is a virtuous example of circular economy, as it recycles, recovers and regenerates 500,000 tonnes per year of end-of-life wood from separate waste collection, transforming it, through a complex production process, into panels for the furniture industry.
Thanks to continuous investments in technology and research aimed at obtaining 100% eco-sustainable panels and decorative surfaces with a strong tactile and emotional impact, the company has succeeded in establishing itself in the high quality product design sector, combining aesthetics, technology and reuse in the best possible way. 

Social commitment

In addition to environmental protection, Saib is strongly committed to social issues, supporting actions that translate into concrete benefits for associations, people and territories. Actions that have become even more concrete during the Covid-19 health emergency: such as the 200,000 euros donated to the hospitals of Cremona and Piacenza, the support as sponsor of small sports associations and foundations for young people with physical disabilities, intellectual disabilities and autism, the integration of the difference in salary to all employees who have suffered a wage cut due to the redundancy fund requested during the production lockdown in April and May. Despite the current uncertainties, Saib also decided to invest 20 million euros in a new wood drying plant, looking forward to a new start.

Sustainability and social awareness

In spite of the difficult global competitive context, there are many Italian companies with excellent performances, and this is precisely the aim of the Best Performance Award: to describe this reality and enhance the culture of best practices in Italian business, especially in a situation of uncertainty and difficulty such as the current one, where examples of resilience and courage should be celebrated as a true source of inspiration.
“The continuing pandemic situation in 2020 has strengthened the attention of Italian entrepreneurs to sustainability and pushed them with even greater determination to share its importance with all business stakeholders,“ said Maurizio Dallocchio, Bocconi University Professor of Finance, Past Dean SDA Bocconi School of Management. “In this fourth edition of BPA we have seen a growing healthy competition among entrepreneurs to show the positive social and environmental externalities resulting from their business initiatives. The hot topic of the 2020 edition was clearly focused on the ability to react to the Covid pandemic and what emerged was a virtuous resilience that led our finalist companies both to adapt wisely to new business models and to take care of their own territory“.