From wheat to chips

Fact sheet

Days

7

Cities

Palermo, Catania, Taormina, Randazzo

Recommended season

March to June and September to October

Group

15 to 20 participants

Language of the visits

confirmed at the time of booking, site by site

Schengen days used

7 out of 90, counting the day of entry and the day of exit

Price

Quotation on request

→ Request a quotation · Download the itinerary in PDF

In the quotation we write which sites are confirmed and which are being confirmed, one by one.

Itinerary day by day

Day 1 — Palermo. Opening

In the afternoon, a two-hour opening session. The question of the week is handed out and the island's economic map is built together: what leaves here, where it goes and with how much added value.

Day 2 — Palermo. The context, before the companies

A day of guided work in two blocks of three hours on public sources: export figures, business demography, employment. It is the least spectacular day of the week and it is the one that makes all the others useful, because a group that walks into a district without knowing how much it weighs does not understand what it is looking at.

Day 3 — Transfer to Catania and first contact with the district

In the morning, the transfer.

In the afternoon, the Distretto Tecnologico Micro e Nano Sistemi, in the industrial zone: the consortium company that has sat three Sicilian universities, research centers and companies at the same table since 2008. You look at who puts up the money, who puts up the laboratories and who decides what is researched.

Day 4 — Catania. The university that feeds the district

In the morning, the University of Catania, Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering: the department that trains the engineers the district hires and that has for years taken its students to the plants in the area.

In the afternoon, a three-hour working session comparing two curricula, the Catanian and the Mexican.

Day 5 — Randazzo. The other precision industry

A full day on Etna, at Donnafugata: vineyards, winery and a professional tasting, by compulsory booking and at fixed times. You look at an agronomy that measures, certifies and traces like an industrial plant, because that is the parallel the whole day is built on.

Day 6 — Taormina. The work

A guided day in two blocks of three hours. Each team designs a concrete mechanism for making the island's two industries talk to each other: a program, a consortium, a fund, a school. With the costs estimated and with whoever would have to put them up.

Day 7 — Presentation and closing

In the morning, ten-minute presentations and discussion. In the afternoon, closing and handover of the certificate of participation.

What you visit

What this experience does not include today, and we write it ourselves

This week does not include entry into a semiconductor plant, nor a visit to a large wine company in the west of the island, nor visits inside agri-food companies in Syracuse. For none of the three do we have a booking channel today, so we do not name them, we do not promise them and they are not in the price. The industrial content of this week is the consortium, the university and the research chain, plus an Etna winery with a public visit program: it is less than the title lets you imagine, and that is why we write it plainly instead of letting it be discovered.

For seven days this content is thin. If the group is after industrial density, the four-day experience on Catania says the same thing in less time, and the week is completed with another region.

What is included and what is not

Included: admissions and visits to the confirmed sites, the booking and coordination with whoever receives the group, the guided working sessions totalling seventeen hours, the materials, one person from the Istituto with the group for all seven days, the final report handed to the institution that brings the group and the certificate of participation in the experience.

Not included: flight, transfers to and from the airport, travel within the island, lodging, meals, personal travel insurance.

The season, and why

You travel from March to June and from September to October.

January and February are out for two reasons that add up: Etna and the vineyards are impassable in winter, and the universities are in their exam period, the time of year when a department has the least time for a delegation.

August is out: heat and closures.

The reason, month by month, is on the Seasons page.

Logistics and capacity

Palermo and Catania are about three hours apart by road and the transfer takes up a whole morning, which the program declares as such. Randazzo and Taormina are reached from Catania in a little over an hour. The recommended group is 15 people: it is the size that reaches the group rates without going over the access limits of the visits, which at these sites go up to 25. Above 20 the itinerary splits into two slots, the day gets longer and the cost per person does not go down. The winery works to fixed time slots and publishes no group rate: the capacity of the slot is checked before the date is confirmed.

Cover

The program includes an accident and public liability policy for the whole stay. The sums insured, the insurer and the policy number are published once it is taken out and are attached to the contract; until then they can be requested in writing, with an answer within two working days.

Do you want it to count as training, with a certificate? This experience can be built into an Istituto program, with classroom hours, a piece of work to deliver and a certificate of attendance. → For groups

→ Request a quotation

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