UFI Filters Group has been awarded the “Panda d’Oro Award 2024”, one of the most prestigious recognitions within the 13th edition of the “Panda d’Oro Gala Awards”, the traditional event organised by the Italian Chamber of Commerce in China (CICC) with the support of the Embassy of Italy in China, the Consulate General of Italy in Shanghai, and with the cooperation of the Italian Cultural Institute of Beijing and Shanghai. The main theme of this year’s ceremony was ‘Marco Polo – 700 years later’, celebrating the symbol of international relations and highlighting Italy’s historical importance in cultural and economic exchanges with China.

UFI Filters Group received the highest honour, the “Panda d’Oro Award” the iconic award for the Italian companies that invested the most in the Chinese market during 2023.

This is the third time in its history that UFI Filters has received this important accolade, the first being in 2010 for growth in the Chinese market and the second in 2021 for innovation.

Giorgio Girondi, Chairman of the UFI Filters Group comments: “The first time was in 2010, when the award was in its first edition. At that time, UFI was ranked first and other recognitions went to FIAT, Costa Crociere and Bulgari. The first Chinese company on Italian soil was Huawei, which was still unknown to us, and we smiled when we wondered who it was, as it only had 450 employees in Italy at the time. Today, however, it is the colossus we all know and has over 97,000 employees in R&D and $9 billion in net profit. Perhaps it was better not to laugh and realise what China would become’. After UFI, Ferrero and Ferrari among others were awarded in the following years.

The ceremony was held at the W Hotel in Shanghai on 15th June and represented an important meeting point for the Italian and Chinese business community. It was attended by the Ambassador of Italy to China, Massimo Ambrosetti, the Consul General of Italy in Shanghai, Tiziana D’Angelo, the Director of the Italian Trade Agency (ITA/ICE) for China and Mongolia Francesco Pensabene, the President of the CICC, Lorenzo Riccardi, and second-level inspector of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce, Liu Taiqiu, Director of Shanghai Foreign Investment Development Board, Xue Feng, Deputy Director of the Office of Hongkou District People’s Government of Shanghai, Zhang Jingyun.

International Liaison Department, Council for the Promotion of International Trade Shanghai, Li JieUFI Filters has been honoured with the “Panda d’Oro Award” thanks to its continuous investments in the country of the dragon, where this year it inaugurated its seventh plant, UFI GREEN in Jiaxing. This is the first industrial site of the Group in China completely dedicated to green technologies, for which it has invested a total of 45 million euros. It is a plant that will run entirely on green energy, where UFI GREEN will develop and manufacture advanced battery thermal management systems and innovative filtration products. These products will be available for electric vehicles (cars, trucks, tractors, excavators, railways and aircrafts, etcetera). The second phase of the plant’s development will be a joint venture with Sinopec, the largest oil company in the Far East, with a planned investment of around 34,000 square metres dedicated to the production of membranes to extract hydrogen from water and membranes to produce electricity from previously separated hydrogen, aiming to provide environmentally sustainable solutions.

Giorgio Girondi, President of the UFI Filters Group comments: “We are very proud to receive this prestigious award for the third time in our history. We arrived in China in the early eighties, with a lot of drive, selling turnkey plants to the Chinese government. We were the first industrial filter manufacturer in the country. Now we have inaugurated our seventh industrial site, which is set to expand its production capacity in the coming years, becoming one of the main centres in China for the production of technologies for electric vehicles and components for the production of green hydrogen”.