Getting ahead of the CSRD and ESRS. An interview with Italcer Group

In 2025, Italcer Group, a leading player in the Italian and Spanish ceramics sector, chose to voluntarily draft its Sustainability Report for financial year 2024, taking on the requirements of the CSRD Directive a year ahead of schedule. We interviewed Ilaria Patri, Head of Group Legal, Compliance & Internal Audit at the Group, to hear about her experience and better understand the benefits this step brought, as well as the areas for improvement. As NATIVA, we supported Italcer Group through every phase of preparing and drafting the Report, including the double materiality assessment and aligning the sustainability strategy with the ESRS standards.

Hi Ilaria! How did this CSRD experience go? The first impact with the CSRD was demanding! Unlike GRI, which I find clear and easy to understand, the CSRD is a more complex piece of regulation to read and grasp, even for a lawyer like me! The ESRS standards aren't divided in a simple, linear way, and they have numerous cross-references that make it hard to understand each principle on its own. That was a real difficulty for me. I found double materiality interesting, because getting it up and running, and then maintaining it, requires and drives a cultural shift within the company, constantly integrating financial logic with impact logic.

Speaking of the ESRS, what did you find useful? Where is there room for improvement? Did this reporting process bring any new awareness to light for you? I would simplify the structure of the ESRS, because I found the current breakdown into topics, sub-topics and data points complex. I also think more clarity is needed on how certain metrics are calculated, to ensure comparability between companies. For example, there are currently different methodologies for calculating scopes, even between countries like Spain and Italy, and they aren't aligned with the ETS systems, which creates confusion even among financial institutions. This inconsistency makes it hard to compare companies, even when each calculation is formally correct, undermining the usefulness of the data. On the awareness side, working on the reporting let us discover that we're more virtuous than we thought: a strong internal alignment emerged, in which every function already has a sustainability-oriented approach. Thanks to the reporting, we're also starting to quantify the hours we dedicate to volunteering; previously, these activities were carried out without any tracking system, and at times we weren't even aware of the activities our colleagues were doing.

What were the benefits of the double materiality assessment? How did it help your understanding of the business? Any specific thoughts on double materiality? Double materiality is very useful for two main reasons. First, it fosters a productive exchange of information between the sustainability function and the other business areas, including finance. Second, quantifying the economic value of external impacts on the company makes it possible to plan sustainability strategies that are realistically aligned with the business plan and the financial resources available. The analysis also helps the company become aware of potential risks and organize itself accordingly, adopting the necessary organizational and insurance measures, which recent regulation has also made mandatory. While the impact analysis, meaning how the company affects the outside world, proved valuable because it drives improvement in existing practices, I believe that understanding how external trends impact your own business offers even more significant insights, because it can prompt you to rethink the model by which the company creates value and to prepare more effectively for the future.

How was the CSRD process perceived by stakeholders? Did it lead to greater engagement on sustainability topics? Did the CSRD help bring the sustainability function (CSO) closer to the finance function (CFO)? And finally, has this new process changed the company's perception of sustainability? One of the main pieces of feedback we received concerned the questions in the survey we sent out for the impact materiality analysis: many respondents noted that the questions based on the ESRS standards were hard to understand. So if the directive's goal is to embed sustainability into corporate culture, it would help to adopt simpler language, especially when involving people who don't deal with these topics on a daily basis. As for the link between the sustainability and finance areas, I can confirm that the colleagues involved had already taken part in ESG training events in the past, and thanks to the new activities, those relationships have become even stronger, especially with the CFO's direct involvement in the double materiality assessment. Where we used to involve colleagues from other, more production-related functions, the CFO is now an integral part of the process. Italcer Group doesn't have an ESG officer, but rather a Sustainability Team, coordinated by the legal function and made up of members from the HSE, HR, communications, finance and quality departments. This setup, under the strategic guidance of our CEO, fosters a shared culture and the spread of sustainability principles, making people aware, also thanks to the specific training we run every year. The sustainability report is therefore one more step, and it's highly valued by the commercial department too, since it provides deep insight into the company.

What do you think of the simplification of the standards proposed by the Omnibus package? I think a simplification is needed, one that turns reporting into an easier tool, effective for comparing companies and immediately understandable for all stakeholders, without requiring experts to "translate" the reports. From this point of view, the Omnibus Package and, in particular, EFRAG's creation of the VSME standards (Voluntary ESRS for SMEs) represent a concrete step in this direction. It's a shame, though, that the Omnibus reduces the scope of companies subject to CSRD reporting so much, because the directive's original idea only works if there's broad engagement across the economic fabric.

What did you appreciate about NATIVA's support? Among the various criteria we use to choose who to work with, quality is a fundamental one. We were struck right away by NATIVA's co-design approach, by its innovative and even disruptive vision, which is necessary in a moment in history marked by challenges as complex as today's. It's clear that you're a top-tier partner, and we needed someone who understood the complexity of the subject, going beyond simply ticking a box. I believe NATIVA has shown a level of expertise that makes it a strategic partner for any organization.

Does your company want to align its reporting with the ESRS by building a solid infrastructure that involves key people, is integrated into the business, helps guide the company’s evolution, and enables long-term autonomy? Discover how a CSRD journey with NATIVA works!