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NUOVA SIMONELLI ITS HISTORY AND FUTURE THE RIGID PEAKS OF THE APENNINES rise abruptly, creating a wall on the horizon with their exposed granite faces and steep, mountainous shoulders. To travel across them means finding a narrow winding path or taking the highway, with its miles of tunnels bored straight through rock. Picturesque hill towns populate the ridgelines and lonely hillocks in every direction, their stone walls, medieval houses and church towers spying over the landscape. Vineyards rise on the hillsides while the fields that stretch across large swathes of the valley floors have been painted bright yellow. As the day lengthens and the sun crosses the sky, acres and acres of silent sunflowers turn their heads with it. And yet, though it is obviously, delightfully, magnificently Italian, this countryside isn't populated by multitudes of international tourists like those prowling the hills and cities directly across the Italian peninsula from where I stand. Instead, we are due east of Tuscany, across Umbria into the region known as Marche (pronounced mar-KAY'), which stretches from the Apennine spine of Italy across a hilly and rural land before reaching the long, sandy beaches of the Adriatic Sea. I'm riding in Cosimo Libardo's Fiat as we wind our way out of Marche's capital, Ancona, and up and around Monte Conero, an unspoiled headland that bursts up from the water to nearly 1900 feet and juts out into the azure Adriatic. Ancona, Cosimo tells me, is a historic port, and a fort that stands in the distance was used to fight off pirates. This was the Roman Empire's main trading route to the Dalmatian Coast, and throughout the Middle Ages, Ancona served as the Vatican's main transport hub to the lands of the east. Marche was one of the bastions of Vatican power, and a part of the Papal States under direct control of the Pope, until Italian unification in 1861. To the west, fields of sunflowers alternate with round bales of hay, and here and there olive groves and grape vineyards paint swatches of green into the golden mosaic farmland. The Nuova Simonelli factory, where Cosimo's office as sales manager for the company stands, is about an hour southwest of here. As we alternately drive on narrow two-lane roads and the high-speed autostrada, we pass a recurring feature of this landscape: plots of land that have been taken out of agricultural production and turned over to making energy. Like those fields of sunflowers that follow the sun all day The region of Marche is located in central Italy, bordered by the republic of San Marino to the north, Tuscany to the northwest, Umbria to the west, and the Adriatic Sea to the east. long, rows and rows of titled solar panels fill acres of space. Italy is one of the world's largest producers of solar power, and the country has accelerated its pace of investment in clean, renewable energy. Solar power production increased threefold in 2010 compared to 2009, and 2011 saw even greater growth. Tax incentives have helped numerous companies take the plunge and move into solar power production, too. Florence, Italy–based La Marzocco, for example, is among espresso machine manufacturers who have gone to great lengths to ensure not only the sustainability of their factory and operations, but also their positive impact on the environment. With its Marche factory, Nuova Simonelli joins the ranks of the environmentally friendly, and goes even further by harnessing the sun with its factory in not one but two ways. First, of course, are the standard solar panel arrays, which collect energy from the sun and convert it to electricity. Second is a passive solar technology in which rows of specially designed north-facing windows maximize the amount of sunlight that enters the building and illuminates the factory floor. For many of the factory's working hours, no artificial light is even needed. In a commitment to sustainable practices beyond solar power, the whole Nuova Simonelli plant is now a zero-waste facility. But sustainability, marketing director Maurizio Giuli tells me isn't an end point, but "a process." And he says, it means more than making sure no more packing material than necessary is used, or that 95% of the company's new flagship espresso machine, the Aurelia II T3, is recyclable. "Sustainability is a good term, but cannot [by itself] be a business model," Maurizio says. That is, looking at what goes into a machine or the process by which it's made is important, but also equally important is what comes out. And in this case, Maurizio's not talking about the end result of an excellent espresso, but rather the fiscal operating environment of the cafés that buy the machines. It's a holistic approach to sustainability, in which the whole endeavor has to be capable of growing and succeeding in order for the effort to survive and thrive. Maurizio says for the investments that Nuova Simonelli has been making in their manufacturing process to really matter, to truly be sustainable, their customers have to be able to make a profit. "The risk is, five years down the road, if we [in the specialty coffee community] don't make a profit, then we can't be sustainable," he says. And www.baristamagazine.com 25