ESGeo | Case Study | Galli & Cassina’s Journey with ESGeo

Galli & Cassina S.p.A. is an Italian company specializing in the design and manufacture of plug valves for Oil & Gas and chemical applications. The company has an industrial heritage dating back to 1919 and operates from its production facility in Solaro, near Milan.

Galli & Cassina operates in a highly specialized technical sector, where reliability, material quality, machining precision and service continuity are key elements of the business model. Its product portfolio includes, among other solutions, pressure-balanced lubricated plug valves, PTFE sleeved plug valves, Double Block & Bleed solutions and multi-way valves.
These are highly engineered manufacturing products, where materials, machining processes, surface treatments, testing procedures and supply chain management have a direct impact on both the product’s technical performance and its environmental footprint.

The Challenge

For an industrial manufacturer such as Galli & Cassina, sustainability cannot be reduced to a reputational message. It must be connected to materials, production processes, energy consumption, waste, suppliers and logistics.

The challenge was to make the product’s environmental impact measurable and to define a corporate emissions reduction pathway, avoiding generic claims and making the most of industrial data already available within the company.
More specifically, the project addressed two complementary needs: on the one hand, preparing an EPD-style/LCA measurement applied to a technical product range; on the other, developing an official Scope 1 and Scope 2 decarbonization plan, including a baseline, targets, roadmap and monitoring KPIs.

The guiding principle behind the journey was simple: if you do not measure, you cannot improve. Measurement is not the end point, but the prerequisite for deciding where to act, which priorities to set and which indicators to use to monitor change.

The Approach

ESGeo supported Galli & Cassina through an integrated pathway connecting product-level environmental measurement with the company’s broader decarbonization strategy. This approach helped avoid a fragmented view, treating the environmental performance of the product and that of the organization as two complementary levels within the same management system.

Product Transparency

The first area of work focused on preparing an EPD-style/LCA document for 22 models of Lubricated Plug Valves. The analysis followed a cradle-to-gate A1-A3 boundary, covering the stages from raw material supply to production at the company’s facility, including inbound transport and relevant outsourced processes. The work involved collecting and normalizing data on main and auxiliary materials, valve technical specifications, energy consumption, fuels, waste, water, transport, surface treatments, coatings and third-party processes. Company data were allocated to the product based on the mass produced, in order to manage the high variability in valve sizes. The analysis made it possible to identify the most relevant environmental hotspots. In particular, the main contribution comes from stage A1, linked to the supply of raw materials, with steel playing a significant role. This finding helps direct future actions towards the supply chain, materials, sourcing and production technologies.

Decarbonization Plan

The second area of work focused on building the 2025 Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions baseline and defining a reduction pathway through to 2030. The 2025 baseline amounts to 481.3 tCO₂e, while the 2030 target is 240.3 tCO₂e, corresponding to an overall reduction of 50.1%. The plan identified the main operational levers to progressively reduce emissions. For Scope 1, the actions address direct emissions from natural gas, petrol and diesel, through measures related to thermal efficiency, preventive maintenance, consumption monitoring, travel optimization and the assessment of a transition of the company vehicle fleet. For Scope 2, the most significant reduction is linked to the procurement of certified renewable electricity, the potential installation of on-site photovoltaic systems and energy efficiency measures, such as LED lighting, automatic switch-off systems, load optimization and efficient set-points.

Data Governance

The project also included the definition of an annual monitoring system, based on KPIs related to Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, electricity consumption, fuel consumption, energy efficiency, the share of renewable energy and the updating of emission factors. In this way, environmental data are not confined to a one-off measurement exercise, but become a working basis that can be updated over time, supporting the assessment of action effectiveness and helping guide future decisions.

The Impact

The project transformed technical and environmental information into a data foundation that can be used both to communicate more transparently and to guide operational priorities.

At product level, the EPD-style/LCA analysis made the cradle-to-gate footprint of the Lubricated Plug Valves clear and understandable, applying a consistent methodology to 22 models in the Class 600 range. This enables Galli & Cassina to respond more effectively to requests from customers, project owners and supply chains, grounding its communication in measurable evidence rather than generic claims.

At company level, the decarbonization plan provided a clear baseline and a progressive reduction pathway for Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. The definition of 2030 targets, operational levers and annual KPIs enables management to monitor the effectiveness of actions over time and update the pathway based on changes in consumption, the energy mix and available technologies.

The value generated by the project can be seen at three levels. The first is informational: the company now has structured and accessible environmental data. The second is managerial: emissions hotspots and reduction levers have been translated into operational priorities. The third is communicative: sustainability can be described in concrete terms, based on data, methodology and monitorable objectives.
Galli & Cassina’s experience shows that environmental transparency is not a path reserved only for large corporations. A small or medium-sized industrial company can also build a credible sustainability approach, provided it starts from measurement, organizes data systematically and turns them into decisions.