Grado zero innovation s.r.l. is an Italian company mainly involved in high-tech materials and products. The approach performed by GZI is a “business-to-business” approach applied to R&D, for designing, prototyping and upscaling innovative material solutions, manufacturing technologies, as well as new products and systems for several industrial fields: PPE (personal protective equipment & protection in general), automotive and aerospace (transportation), construction & buildings, healthcare & wellbeing, biomedical, advanced & smart wearables, textiles & technical fashion, military & defence, yachting & marine/nautical technologies, energy, consumer goods (e.g. furniture & lighting). Grado zero innovation represents one of the Italy’s top companies for what is related to the development of new advanced solutions and novel processing and manufacturing know-how on sustainable products, with absolutely innovative features. The company comprises an e-shop Life Materials (www.lifematerials.eu), and an industrial design dept., incorporating a lab specifically involved in 3d printing and additive manufacturing. A separate dept. Of Grado Zero Innovation is dealing with the development and integration of sensors & sensing technologies, including novel typologies of human-machine interfaces and cyber physical systems. The company has extended skills and competencies on advanced materials spanning from composites and nanocomposites, polymers and bio-polymers, shape memory materials, meso- and micro-porous materials, nano-materials, hydrogels and aerogels, natural and inorganic/synthetic fibres, as well as piezoresistive and piezoelectric materials. Grado zero innovation is also specialized in optical fibre-based sensing solutions, that span from FBG sensor arrays to LPFG-based sensing systems. The company is also specialized in coating technologies, including hydrophobic and super-hydrophobic, moisture retention, anti-microbial, anti-scratch, anti-corrosion, self-healing, thermal and electromagnetic insulation, anti-reflection, anti-UV and protection against abrasion, biofouling and radiations. GZI takes particularly into account all the product life cycle, including ecoefficiency of the manufacturing process and the recycling and reuse of materials at the eol. GZI applies, in its developing and prototyping chain, the eco-design and design for dismantling & reusing/recycling approaches. Design-driven innovation and circularity indicators, defined through the LCA & S-LCA, constitute the major innovation that GZI is able to apply in terms of sustainability. From the analysis of the operational metabolism on which the products and components consume their use phase, the company, using a special it-based approach, is able to identify new business models and new supply chain concepts through which completely reinvent a value added “life” for the disassembled/recovered materials, so providing a more sustainable and eco-friendly way to conceive products and components.

Website: https://www.gzinnovation.eu/