Adnkronos (Adnkronos) – The Barilla Rubbiano Sughi plant, inaugurated in 2012, celebrated its fifteenth anniversary by opening the doors of the production site to its employees and their families. The event was designed to share a milestone shared by the entire plant community and to showcase a place that, beyond its facilities and technologies, is also about skills, relationships, and stories.
The Rubbiano journey began long before these 15 years. It was here that, in 1965, Barilla opened its first plant outside the city of Parma, producing Mulino Bianco rusks and breadsticks. In 2012, nearly fifty years later, the site took on a new industrial challenge with the opening of the plant dedicated to sauces and pestos.
When it opened, it had 120 employees and two production lines, with a capacity of approximately 35.000 tons of sauces per year.
Since then, the plant has experienced steady growth: today, Rubbiano employs over 400 people, processing 136 ingredients and combining them into 44 recipes. In 2024, the fifth production line went online, increasing the plant's capacity by approximately 15.000-18.000 tons of sauces per year, bringing Rubbiano's overall annual capacity to approximately 120.000 tons, nearly five times its initial capacity in 2012.
"I joined Rubbiano five years ago, starting in the kitchen, and over the years I've had the opportunity to grow, moving from packaging to quality control, all the way to packaging manager," says Ilaria Bertola, packaging manager at Rubbiano Sughi. "I feel lucky because Barilla believed in me and gave me the opportunity to grow alongside the plant. For me, it's a family, a group of people who work well together, and I'd like to continue being a part of it in the future."
Behind every jar of sauce or pesto produced in Rubbiano lies an industrial process in which quality and food safety are paramount priorities, from the selection of raw materials to processing, all the way to the final product arriving on consumers' tables. The plant produces for the Italian and international markets, and today its output is roughly divided between 60% red-based sauces, with tomato as the main ingredient, and 40% pesto. This extensive portfolio includes 44 recipes, created from 136 ingredients, each carefully selected and processed in compliance with Barilla's high standards of quality, hygiene, and food safety. Every day, approximately 100 wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano are grated in Rubbiano, for a total of approximately 30.000 wheels per year, a testament to the plant's production scale and, at the same time, the care dedicated to the raw materials used in its recipes.
Attention to the quality of raw materials is accompanied by a path of continuous innovation. In 2020, Barilla developed its Basil Charter, with the aim of promoting sustainable agricultural practices, protecting biodiversity and soil health, and enhancing farming communities. The basil used in Barilla pestos and sauces comes from sustainable agriculture in compliance with the criteria established by the ISCC PLUS certification system.
work
webinfo@adnkronos.com (Web Info)