Founded in 2000, Diasen is a BCorp company located in central Italy that has transformed the entrepreneurial experience in the construction chemicals sector into a growth opportunity, rapidly evolving from an innovative start-up to an international point of reference for architecture and green building.
Interview with Paolo Bernardi, Global Strategy Manager at Diasen.
A brief description of the company and its activities.
Paolo Bernardi: The company offers a wide range of cork and lime-based bio-mortars and paints, developing, designing and producing biophilic solutions that use natural materials such as cork, lime, clay and pumice stone. These materials play a strategic role in the creation of architectures that promote well-being and the quality of living spaces. The biophilic mortars and natural and decorative paints proposed by Diasen respond in an innovative way to the growing demand for constructions and homes that follow the “Mediterranean style”. Their solutions are characterized by beauty, lightness and healthiness, while the porosity of cork gives unique properties of well-being and harmony with nature. In this context, Diasen represents the evolution of a traditional construction chemicals company capable of becoming a leader in the production of innovative materials for sustainable comfort architecture inspired by the tradition of Mediterranean Building. Furthermore, the company has also established itself in the world of design, extending the excellent technical and aesthetic performance of its products to this sector.
What are the main areas of activity of the company?
P.B: Diasen, through the production and marketing of biophilic mortars and cork-based paints, operates in three main areas that are the basis of its strategic brand reposition: architecture, decoration and design. In this framework, the company operates in some strategic areas: architects and design studios, installers (comfort consultants) and specialized distributors. The architects and engineers are the subjects of the strategic partnership, the prescribers of Diasen solutions, those who, in addition to paying attention to forms, influence and orient the specifications and decide the materials to be used. Installers and comfort consultants called to directly measure themselves on the construction site with Diasen technologies and with an applicative vision that is fundamental for achieving the quality and performance objectives of the materials. Specialized distributors play an important role in the field of insulation and decoration, in which they present a fundamental support in relationship, training and logistics. Diasen therefore develops in parallel relationships and partnerships with architects and engineers, applicators and distributors and is characterized as a subject capable of connecting three realities that tend to remain distant, linking their needs and carrying out a real function of cultural mediation.
What’s the news about new products?
P.B: For a long season, despite the innovation of technologies and solutions, Diasen has proposed to the market a cycle of interventions based on a traditional conceptual system such as plaster – skim coat – finishing/paint. The core business of the company represented by plaster and bio-mortar was therefore “covered” with a view to completing the cycle. The situation changed when the world of architecture began to search for a real “incomplete cycle”, based on the use of exposed biophilic mortar that brings out the material components of the formulation and the biophilic elements of the material linked to the emergence of cork granules on the surface. This created a significant innovation because, unlike other manufacturers, for Diasen biomortars do not represent a mass-market product but the highest essence of the company identity, that is the point of maximum convergence between technology and research and development. Something similar also happened in the decorative field where cork and clay-based paints, thanks to the infinitive textures and effects, have extended their field of use from the internal and external surfaces of buildings to objects and design, probably the most profound revolution experienced by the company in its almost 25 years of activity.
What are the ranges of products?
P.B: We have been developing cork-based biophilic mortars for almost 25 years. From the first non-premixed plaster to today’s biophilic and Mediterranean mortars, the Diathonite brand has become a milestone in the market of materials for sustainable comfort. The Diathonite line ensures important thermal performance throughout its range thanks to a formulation that stands out for the porosity of its components and for its ability to exploit the properties of the air incorporated as a high-performance natural insulator. The Diathonite line responds specifically and in a structured way to every aspect of the great challenge of comfort: insulation from heat, an increasingly central factor in the face of global warming and the global climate crisis; insulation from the cold that responds to fundamental protection needs in the winter seasons at certain latitude levels; thermo-hygrometric comfort that has a profound impact on the feeling of indoor well-being and the assessment of air quality; sound absorption and sound insulation that ensure quality of buildings in a context increasingly conditioned by noise pollution; fire protection thanks to the fireproof nature of cork and structural safety possible thanks to a Diasen application system that allows to work on seismic improvement and on the lightness and resistance of structures.
At what stage is the market where you are currently active?
P.B: The strategic choices made by Diasen ensure that it is positioned within a limited size market niche with high added value. The technology of bio-mortars and cork-based paints makes Diasen unique in the panorama of products and solutions for construction and architecture. The characteristics identified in the description of the barriers to entry are those that determine the occupation of a niche characterized by the production of innovative materials with high performance, sustainable footprint, versatility of use and recognized aesthetic reflections. Due to its dimensional characteristics, the niche allows us to achieve high profit margins following the specific characteristics of the offer and its dynamics of intersection with demand.
What can you tell us about market trends?
P.B: Overall, there are some general difficulties in the international market due to geopolitical destabilization, energy turbulence and some negative legacies attributable to the tail end of Covid. Overall, however, the barriers to entry that characterize the niche in which we operate allow us to calmly face the general difficulties of the market. Looking to the future, Diasen is very confident because the company’s ability to differentiate itself not only through technologies but also by developing an operation considered impractical in a market that tends to be traditional: working with a brand perspective and ensuring that the perception of the company positions it on the market by supporting the profile of a very high-ranking reality, which creates unique and original solutions for an architecture that wants to return to its noble original function. This brand policy supported by communication and technological development of product solutions has allowed the company to occupy a profitable niche with high added value, characterizing this positioning not as a casual fact but as the effect of a brand policy capable of identifying the profile of a unique reality and differentiating it from all the others.
What are the most innovative products marketed?
P.B: The centrality of cork-based bio-mortar has meant that it was rightly considered the true core business of the company and the market space in which to concentrate all the resources of research, development, marketing and sales. The new relationships with architects and engineers and the first entry of the world of design have offered Diasen a new awareness, which is the possibility and opportunity to penetrate the world of decoration; a world interested in a system of natural and innovative finishes intended in their dynamics of solutions focused on colors, effects, textures and everything that concerns the aesthetic elements of decoration. From this point of view, thanks to its technology, Diasen has managed to develop paints based on cork and other natural materials that are demonstrating all their ability to satisfy different needs by combining them together in a single solution: naturalness, aesthetics, biophilia, versatility of use, colors, effects and textures. In recent times, also on the basis of some input received from the architect target, Diasen has decided to measure itself with the design area, which is to verify the possibility of testing bio-mortars and cork-based paints both in the interior and in the manufacturing of objects. And also on this side, potential and attractive commercial conditions are being determined.
What estimations do you have for 2023?
P.B: For 2024, we register the confirmation of a less pronounced growth trend than in previous years. There are markets that are growing (like Romania) and others that are having some difficulties, but the overall composition of our turnover confirms the strategic choices developed in recent years: greater loyalty of architects and engineers, greater interventions in iconic projects, creation of value through entry into the design universe; improvement of the quality of the turnover and strengthening of the elements of attractiveness linked to the repositioning of the brand. Diasen has created the best possible conditions to “ride the wave” of a new phase of development that should follow the slow trend of the current market.