After twelve years at Fuorisalone, Valcucine will be back this year at Eurocucina 2014 to support the re-launch of Made in Italy products.

One focus of Valcucine is ‘sustainability driven innovation’. Once again, the theme is the essence of the company’s unchanging DNA, namely innovation guided by research into greater sustainability.

Pursuing sustainability is not synonymous with ‘being ecological’. It means constantly continuing with ongoing improvement. The tension inherent in this goal has inspired Valcucine to be continually innovative by combining functionality with aesthetics.

Valcucine’s company vision “We have a dream, a waste-free world” has resulted in the main principles of eco-compatibility: dematerialisation, recycling and reusing, reducing toxic emissions, and guaranteeing a long technical and aesthetic life to products.

The Artematica programme is an emblematic example because it revolutionised the concept of kitchen doors like the 2mm thick panels of Riciclantica. The 100 per cent recyclable Invitrum base units (that have no formaldehyde at all) eliminate double side panels and are easy to disassemble. It is also easy to reuse or recycle at the end of the product life cycle.

Valcucine has also obtained compliance to the FSC-STD-40-004 standards in 2008 and its ultimate goal is to produce kitchen models in which all the wooden parts come from FSC forests. The chipboard used for Valcucine kitchens now closely adheres to the limit values set by the strictest regulation in the world- the Japanese Formaldehyde Emission Standards (F four stars)

Additionally, Valcucine is the first Italian kitchen manufacturer to have obtained the ISO 14001 environmental certification.

The pursuit of greater sustainability has also driven the company to tackle not only new product concepts but also new, feasible, production process, and consumption models.

With the Meccanica model and the Invitrum base units, Valcucine has designed kitchen cabinets designed to follow the principles of circular economy by reducing the production of waste and solving.

Valcucine is also open to experimenting with shared innovation models and new production models via open source design and distributed manufacturing with the ‘Kitchen Becomes Open!’ event at the Fuorisalone event in Milan.