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An innovation ecosystem that is bigger than the sum of its parts

Prysmian Groups innovation ecosystem helps it tap into the expertise of the very best technology providers, so that the company can quickly enrich its existing product offering to adapt to market needs.

 

Prysmian Group confirms its commitment to Corporate Hangar for three more years

 

Prysmian Group’s R&D team works in tandem with “innovation factory” Corporate Hangar (partly owned by Prysmian), and with fully-controlled Prysmian Electronics, to create new products with add-on features that go beyond its core cables business. The Group’s product line-up is benefitting from this approach through projects delivered by Corporate Hangar and Prysmian Electronics in 2020, and more is in the pipeline this year.

Corporate Hangar was founded in 2017, and its team of entrepreneurs, university professors, engineers, physicists, project managers, and designers work to develop two new start-ups a year for Prysmian, which retains an equity stake. Prysmian Group confirmed its commitment to Corporate Hangar in 2020 for three more years, said Corporate Hangar Managing Partner Markus Venzin.

Corporate Hangar’s Alesea start-up is a good example of how it works with Prysmian Group in an open innovation model. Prysmian customers said they wanted to make cable drum management more efficient, sparking an idea internally for an IoT smart device installed on the drum, letting customers track its location and their cable inventory. Alesea was created in 2019, and in 2020 the IoT device was rolled out in pilot projects in Europe and the U.S. It is now being adopted by customers in both regions.

Alesea will be used by Prysmian Group in its German corridors project, where it is installing hundreds of kilometers of high voltage underground cables to bring electricity from wind farms in the North Sea to cities and factories in Germany’s south.

<p style="text-align:justify;"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify; line-height:28px;">A second start-up created by Corporate Hangar in 2019, Kablee, got up and running in 2020. It is a digital platform that helps Prysmian enter new project areas where it is not present, and to provide services that makes Prysmian’s offerings more sustainable, like connectivity for rural areas and reselling of unused and also scrapped cables.</p>

<p style="text-align:justify;"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify; line-height:28px;">Corporate Hangar also launched Cultifutura, an “urban farming” start-up, in 2020, giving people access to their own vertical hydroponic garden in their home or office. The start-up’s goal of reducing CO<sub>2</sub> emissions is aligned with Prysmian’s concrete actions in the same direction as part of its goal to become carbon-neutral. Prysmian intends to pilot this system in its Milan headquarters.</p>

“In 2021 we are ready to launch two new start-ups in the area of sustainability,” said Markus. “One is related to energy efficiency, and the other to the safety of telco and energy cabinets.”

Markus Venzin

Managing Partner at Corporate Hangar

 

Prysmian Electronics is a 100%-owned subsidiary and a fully integrated Business Unit of Prysmian Group that develops proprietary technologies and electronics-based products for the monitoring of electrical assets.

In 2020 Prysmian Electronics finalized a new optical sensing device for the monitoring of temperature in cables, says Prysmian Electronics CEO Roberto Candela.

“We decided in 2018 to develop our own optical sensing device technology internally, in order to have a product that was specifically designed for the cable industry,” he says. “What is new is that a cable maker decides to develop a solution, and sell it fully integrated with the cable.”

Roberto Candela

Prysmian Electronics CEO

Candela’s other big project is a Low Voltage application of the PRY-CAM technology that reinforces Prysmian Group’s commitment to sustainability because it helps with energy management and energy monitoring in the home.

Wind and solar farms will also be a focus this year for Prysmian Electronics, says Roberto.

“We’ve been pushing into these markets for a few years and we should start to see results in 2021,” he says. “The renewable energy market is now fully exploiting the benefits and the value of adopting PRY-CAM products for the monitoring of renewable power generation, transmission and distribution assets, in order to preserve their value and mitigate the level of risk they may be subject to.”

Roberto Candela

Prysmian Electronics CEO