Antonio had several roles in the management, development, and company reorganization in Italy and abroad. He provides elasticity and flexibility in relationships, a view of the company decisions not only in a financial, but also in a strategic context, motivation in team as well as individual work, initiative in building new relationships or searching partners for the development of 360° projects, operations coordination and supervision centered on problem solving and result-oriented.
Diego has been working for over 10 years in the Cannabis industry in California, specializing in cannabis extraction on an industrial scale. He is skilled on each step of the process, from raw material selection to optimization of the extraction processes on an industrial scale, and the development of new equipment. Co-founder and CFO of Greenleaf Processors Inc, a company leader in the extraction market in California, Diego brings together with Greenleaf Processors, all his expertise exclusively to CANAX in Europe, from lab design to production development on an industrial scale.
In over twenty years of experience in sales & marketing, he has developed in-depth and varied skills in the field of commercial proposition and market development both in Italy and abroad. He has worked for companies that are very diverse in terms of culture, organizational complexity and reference market. He studied Economics and Business at the University Luigi Bocconi in Milan where he earned several masters in sales. He has also attended courses on topics such as sales and managerial skills.
He considers himself a reliable and resilient resource with a high degree of problem solving and lateral thinking.
He considers himself a reliable and resilient resource with a high degree of problem solving and lateral thinking.
As Albert Einstein said years ago, “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious”, curiosity has always been fundamental and central to my professional career, almost like the dogmatic figure of the black monolith in Kubrick’s ‘2001 Space Odyssey’. This gift has always been at the center of my thinking (besides the passion for quotations and filmography); over the years, it has pushed me to study and understand the world around us in more and more detail. It started with the scientific diploma and continued, first with the Bachelor’s degree in Biology, and then with the Master’s degree in Food Science and Human Health, (food has always been another great passion of mine, perhaps more important than Einstein and Kubrick). Starting from 2018, the training path is joined by the work path through the activation of a PhD course in apprenticeship in Pharmaceutical and Biomolecular Sciences with the participation of Exenia group and the University of Turin. During these 3 and a half years, I have learned a lot and I have always tried to combine the skills developed in the company, with those deepened in the university, two different worlds that must be known and understood in order to develop a critical and managerial thinking. Within the Exenia universe, at first I dealt with the extraction field, refining the management of the process and understanding all the real operational phases that characterize it, such as the management of variables, the loading and unloading of the machine and the monitoring of extraction. I had the opportunity to work with public and private entities, as well as to participate in national and international projects. Later, I specialized and developed sensitivity and skills in algal culture management, particularly at the level of different green single-cell species. Here the challenge becomes more complicated, as the reference system becomes biological and the number of variables involved increases dramatically. In any case, I specialized in the management of light, culture media, pH, temperature and crop health, parameters to be checked every 24h and remodeled for each algal species examined. Extremely formative and interesting congress experiences AlgaEurope 2019 and 2020, two editions of one of the most important international events in the world on this topic. In the university environment, I had the opportunity to work in several departments, in particular those of Plant Physiology, Cardiovascular Physiology and Pharmaceutical Biology at the University of Turin and, for a period of three months, in the Department of Pharmaceutical Biochemistry at the Universidad Mayor de San Andres in La Paz. In these locations, I honed my technical knowledge on different analytical methods such as HPLC, TLC, GC and preparative chromatography, but above all, I learned to work in sterile environments, testing plant extracts directly on endothelial cells in a laminar flow hood completely in BSL-2 (Biosafety Level 2). Besides all this, there are also all the training courses carried out in these 3 years of doctorate that range over different topics, mainly belonging to the biology/pharmacy sphere, including the microbiota macro-theme, a focal point of contemporary world research. Finally, I would like to point out that, in terms of operational goals achieved, the most important one has been the ability to work in a team. I have always firmly believed in this way of working, and during these years I interacted day after day with colleagues, professors, technicians or simply workers in Italian, English and Spanish and I hope to refine more and more my skills in this area. For this reason, my future goals are related to a personal growth with the focus on research and development, up to the management of a close-knit team eager to learn and experiment - in a word, curious, just like me.
Fabrizio graduated in Economics and business managements from Università Cattolica of Milan in 2006. He worked for over 10 years in real estate, cofounded and was the CEO of the start-up Rentopolis until 2017. Since 2018 Fabrizio is the operational and strategic partner of Evolution Bnk, a company specialized in the cannabis sativa farming in GMP and GACP controlled environments. He states “The secret of the success of a winning team is the right chemistry between talent and planning, allocating individuals where they can best express their potential”
Alfonso is one of the leading national and international experts on the extraction of active principles from plants using supercritical carbon dioxide extraction. Since 1995, he is the Board of director’s president, founder, and current technical manager of Exenia Group S.R.L., which performs research and technological development in the food, nutraceuticals and pharmaceutical industries. In 2005 he founded with his partners Separeco Srl (Pinerolo, Turin), a company manufacturing technologically advanced equipment for Exenia Group Srl. relevant industries.
I am an explorer, a seeker of new paths. I am always looking for new ways to approach challenges and, above all else, I love finding solutions to complex problems. Difficulties reinforce my sense of urgency to achieve the goal. Courage, flexibility and kindness dominate my operational methodology. Within the team, I am in charge of planning and following the technical aspects of the production phases of each extract. Together with the team of the technical department, I accompany the production of research for the extraction of oils and essential oils from ever-new raw materials. The study of industrial chemistry has granted me a deep knowledge of the chemistry of several commodities together with the knowledge of the main analysis techniques. Working in Exenia has allowed me to learn about several uncommon vegetable raw materials, it has given me the opportunity to learn how to get the best out of each material by focusing I evaluate and select the best procedures to protect the molecules of interest or improve the yield during extraction. My passion for discovering the innumerable potentialities hidden in plants has given me a solid background on many wonderful plants and on the technology of extraction through supercritical CO2. Among the noble vegetables I’ve been lucky enough to work with are: Cammiphora myrrha resin, Iris pallida rhizomes, Garcinia mangostana, G. cambogia, Myrciaria dubia, fresh coffee beans, tomato seeds and peels, hazelnuts, amaranth and many others. My main task is to follow and manage the production: from the management of the warehouse, from the preparation of raw materials to the care for the post-production of the extracts. I draw up the production sheets for each batch produced and maintain the history so that it is easily accessible for any needs. Together with the technical department and the management, I draw up the final reports for customers on research projects and feasibility studies. Lastly, I handle the management of the maintenance of the production machinery, checking that the maintenance schedule is respected, and I act if necessary. The goal for the future is to enrich my knowledge starting from the study of management in production and research in order to learn how to manage effectively the ever-increasing complexity. I would like to improve my communication skills to be able to transmit clearly and always be understood. In addition, my most important goal, also to give continuity to the path I started at university, is to be able to follow a master’s degree to become a Regulatory Affairs Specialist, a role that I believe is essential in a company where the management of all chemical products and therefore of concentrated extracts is fundamental. In this role, I would bring an excellent ability to interface with people, which, together with chemical and regulatory knowledge, would be an important bulwark to the success of the company.
Carlo Negri Facchinello holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration at the University of Pavia and a Master in International Finance at the Collegio Borromeo of Pavia and he is an Italian economist and investment banker. As an independent economist, under the supervision of Prof. Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, begins the development of the «Financial Superdistricts» (FSD model), disclosed among international Universities and primary Italian and foreign banking institutions and now under construction
With a background in the certification world with a focus on governmental programs, specifically Product Conformity Assessment Programs in Africa and the Middle East, Silvia worked for big players in the field, like SGS Italia Spa and TUV Rheinland Italia srl. She held workshops at AICE (Italian Association of Foreign Trade), Chambers of Commerce, and webinars. Form her multifaceted experience in several sectors, she strongly believes “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it; Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” Goethe
Throughout the years, we wonder and are questioned about what we want to be when we grow up. The answers are all sorts of different until the day you realize your path. I realized that I wanted to be a chemist in my fourth year of high school when I met Jóna, my efnafræði (as chemistry is called in Icelandic) teacher. That year, in fact, I was an exchange student at Fjölbrautaskólinn við Ármúla in Reykjavik (Iceland), and even though I always had the dictionary under my arm, I still liked chemistry and I was good at it; I realized that this would be my path, not even the language barrier was able to stop me. After finishing high school I enrolled in chemistry, I first obtained a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and chemical technologies and then a master’s degree in industrial chemistry. After some internships and research grants, including Exenia group, in 2019 I started the PhD path, in order to obtain the PhD title with a path that combines the university training with the business reality. In fact, the University of Turin provides the training but the research is conducted at Exenia Group’s research and development laboratory. This duality of the PhD project, offered by the Piedmont region, allows me to enrich my background as a chemist and at the same time to deal with the industrial reality. My research project aims to optimize the extraction processes by means of supercritical CO2 from waste materials of the food chain. In short, in Exenia we have the ambitious project of giving value to what for others would be a waste to be disposed of. Moreover, at Canax group I am in charge of the ISO 9001 quality system; I also deal with the development of analytical methods to monitor the content of molecules of interest in the extracts. Thanks to my doctorate and the continuous training that the company promotes, I have been able to attend specific courses in order to specialize in the tasks that I cover. In addition to working with a specific consultant for ISO 9001 quality management systems, I had the opportunity to attend the course for quality management system managers, promoted by Tüv Italia, with which I would like to continue my training to become an auditor. Of course, chemistry remains a fixed point in my professional career; the university offers me through the PhD the opportunity to specialize in different analytical techniques, and at the same time focus on HPLC analysis of organic substances, which requires a lot of study and in-depth knowledge to master it at its best. My hope is to continue my training in this direction. In the last year, I also had the opportunity to approach the world of multivariate analysis; this approach allows the study of the interactions between variables within a complex system, hence to develop a complete vision of the studied system. For this reason, I would like to deepen my knowledge in chemometrics, to better master this technique, so that I can apply it at industrial level and be able to get the best from the research we conduct at Exenia group
