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Environmental technology transfer in the galvanic industry: beyond implementation of the IPPC directive

In an industrial context, a company's ability to manage the environmental issue strategically is an important competitive advantage. Pollution prevention is one of the principal factors in the innovation of production processes, above all in the galvanic industry. This is also due to the recent evolution of the European regulation framework, for which new technological standards are fixed by the end of 2005 (best available techniques, BAT). The paper provides a technical and economic assessment of the Italian galvanic industry. In the first part, BAT included in the BREF report ("surface treatment of metals and plastic materials using electrolytic or chemical processes") are analysed and classified according to the their documented economic performance (pay-back time and internal rate of return) and the complexity of implementation. The analysis confirms that all the proposed BAT are able to generate significant production cost savings with a short PBT. The second part of the paper presents a broad-based survey of the galvanic industry in Italy. The survey reveals a considerable gap between the proposed BAT and the technological solutions currently installed in Italian firms. At present, it is difficult for Italian SMEs to access the critical know-how necessary to make strategic decisions regarding the techniques and technologies that could improve their processes.