"Sadly, a piece of our past is ending"

I received the message in the title today, January 19, 2023, from my good friend and former colleague Walter Panigas. "Unfortunately a piece of our past closes" is his message accompanied by a link to the source, veneziatoday.it, informing me that Akzo Nobel is closing its headquarters in Peseggia-Scorzè, Italy.

Akzo Nobel is a multinational company, also present in Romania, which produces varnishes and paints for all surfaces. The announcement was made by trade unions who, in the uncertainty that has arisen, have also gone on strike.

Scorzè's weigh-in! I know that place quite well and have many friends I met there. Not only Italians.

At the end of the 90s I entered business/entrepreneurship (together with Mihaela Radu) as a distributor of industrial wood varnishes and paints produced by ICLA, based in Peseggia di Scorzè. It was the time when I started visiting Italy, getting to know it and loving it. Obviously, the people, the Italians, were a great help to me, especially the people of Peseggia di Scorzè. At the time I thought we were lucky to have met such people and to be able to work with such a company. Today I think it was actually a habit for people to keep their word, for deals to be made with a simple handshake, for friendships to be bound for life.

In the early 2000s, ICLA was acquired by Akzo Nobel and we all joined - first as partners, then as colleagues - the tumult of the multinational company's business. With good and bad. Bad, for me, obviously. I met more people - some of whom I became friends with - but we got caught up in business patterns, organisational procedures and the more impersonal way of working together. But I have to admit that I learned a HUGE amount during that time. Now, if Akzo Nobel has taken the decision to close the Peseggia di Scorzè headquarters, there is surely a business logic behind it. If we don't see it now, it will show itself to us in the coming period.

On hearing the news, I replied to Walter "Comunque la vita va avanti. I will use the information to write two articles, one in Romanian for revistadinlemn.ro, the other in English for woodindustry.news. 🙂 " (Still life goes on. I will use the information to write two articles, one in Romanian for revistadinlemn.ro, the other in English for woodindustry.news).

Life goes on. Memories, friendships remain. For Walter and I, as for many of our friends and acquaintances, the above text is news. For the rest of you, I hope you enjoyed my history tab.