"We don’t sell just products and components; we sell solutions,” emphasises Francesco Natale, commercial manager for Sapa’s market area Solar in Italy.

Sapa Application Centre Italy, which employs five engineers, and the Sapa sales team work closely with Sapa customers to develop customised aluminium structures, innovative pv frames and dedicated inverter heat sinks. “We are the only extrusion company in Italy that offers a total approach – from design to logistics – and customers are willing to pay for this,” says Natale. “It saves them time, money, and headaches!”

Thanks to a government subsidy programme initiated in 2007, and recently renewed until 2016, Italy’s solar business is especially bright.

“We don’t sell just products and components; we sell solutions.”

In Italy, as elsewhere, energy derived from photovoltaic (pv) cells is relatively expensive compared to energy derived from oil. But Italian solar producers are working hard toward ‘grid parity’ whereby the cost of solar equals the cost of oil. “As competition within solar increases and installation costs decrease, we are getting closer to parity, which I hope we’ll achieve in about two years. After that, with Sapa’s total approach, we’ll be in great shape: Italy has lots of sunshine!”

Michele Jiménez