Sergi Barrull appointed new CEO of SICIT GROUP
Sergi Barrull appointed new CEO of SICIT GROUP to lead the next phase of growth and innovation
The Agribusiness executive succeeds Massimo Neresini who has served the company for four decades, as part of a planned leadership transition
Arzignano, Italy, 15 October 2026
Image: Sergi Barrull
SICIT Group today announced the appointment of Sergi Barrull as Chief Executive Officer, marking the beginning of a new phase focused on accelerating international growth, strengthening the company’s commercial capabilities and bringing innovation to market faster.
Barrull, who joined SICIT as General Manager in July 2025, succeeds Massimo Neresini, who has served the company for nearly four decades, including approximately two decades at its helm. The planned leadership transition marks the conclusion of a defining chapter in SICIT’s history, during which Neresini helped shape the company into the international business it is today.
Under Barrull’s leadership, SICIT will build on its established positions in agriculture and industrial applications while pursuing two main strategic priorities: strengthening its commercial capabilities and international reach; and complementing its technical strengths with a more market-driven approach to product development and innovation.
Geographically, the company intends to continue growing in Europe and Asia, where it already has an established presence, while accelerating its expansion into North and South America through a combination of organic growth and targeted acquisitions, where strategically appropriate.
At the same time, SICIT plans to focus its innovation resources on selected areas offering clear value to customers and end users, accelerating the development of solutions supported by locally validated data and competitive performance. The company’s future innovation strategy will be centred around its three technology pillars: Collagen-derived peptide fractions, Patagonian seaweed extracts and Moringa-based botanicals.
It is an honour to lead SICIT at such an important moment,” said Sergi Barrull. “Massimo and the team have built an exceptional foundation of technical excellence, product quality and sustainability leadership. Our ambition now is to build on that foundation, getting the right solutions to customers faster and taking SICIT into more markets.
— Sergi Barrull
Barrull also intends to build a high-performing, agile and customer-focused organisation capable of supporting SICIT’s growth ambitions in the years ahead.
Building on Neresini’s circular economy legacy
Neresini joined SICIT in 1988 as a chemical engineer, following experience with leading companies in the fine chemical industry, including Ciba-Geigy. He soon became a driving force behind the technological innovations that would establish SICIT as a global leader in collagen-derived peptides and amino acids.
Image: Massimo Neresini
In the 1990s, when SICIT’s activities were primarily focused on animal feed, the BSE crisis severely undermined confidence in animal-derived ingredients across Europe. Neresini played a decisive role in safeguarding the company’s future. Working alongside researchers at the University of Edinburgh, he helped pioneer a rigorous hydrolysis process that demonstrated the safety of SICIT’s products and met stringent European regulatory requirements.
This technological breakthrough reinforced SICIT’s pioneering position in animal-derived protein hydrolysates, establishing standards of production excellence and regulatory compliance that remain central to the company’s operations today and have made SICIT a benchmark for the industry and the EU regulatory framework regarding animal-derived hydrolised proteins.
This exceptional foundation of technological expertise, regulatory compliance and production excellence became the springboard for SICIT’s expansion into agriculture. A key differentiator of SICIT’s proprietary hydrolysis technology is its ability to produce not only free amino acids, but also high concentrations of bioactive short-chain peptides, contributing to the distinctive agronomic performance of its biostimulants.
Olive trees were the first crop on which SICIT’s technology was introduced, delivering impressive yield improvements that quickly attracted the attention of growers.
These early successes drove rapid adoption across an increasingly diverse range of crops, ultimately establishing SICIT’s biostimulants as widely used solutions throughout Europe. Over the past decade, SICIT’s collagen-based biostimulants have also established a strong presence in China and the Asia-Pacific region through long-standing partnerships with leading global agrochemical companies.
Today, SICIT’s technology is incorporated into several internationally successful biostimulant formulations, with its products estimated to be used on more than 30 million hectares worldwide.
Neresini’s vision also drove SICIT’s diversification into industrial applications, pioneering the use of bio-based amino acids as retarding agents in gypsum and plasterboard manufacturing. This innovation established a new business segment in which SICIT has developed a strong international position, particularly in North America, Europe and Latin America.
Sustainability has been integral to SICIT’s business model long before it became a global priority. Since the 1960s, the company has embraced circular economy principles, transforming residues that would otherwise generate significant carbon emissions in landfill, a principle Massimo championed throughout his career.
This approach is estimated to avoid approximately 2 million tons of CO2 emissions annually, and has helped the company earn its EcoVadis Platinum recognition, making SICIT a natural fit for sustainability-focused investors, including current shareholders Renaissance Partners and TPG Rise Climate.
Leading SICIT for two decades and being part of this company for nearly 40 years has been the privilege of my professional life,” said Massimo Neresini. “I am immensely proud of what our team has achieved, and I am confident that these strong foundations will continue to support SICIT’s future success and growth.
— Massimo Neresini
An international track record in agricultural innovation
Barrull brings more than two decades of experience across management consulting, global agribusiness corporations and high-growth start-up businesses, with particular expertise in agricultural inputs and international business development.
He began his career as a management consultant at Accenture before joining Syngenta, where he held global and regional leadership roles spanning crop protection and biocontrols and later led the company’s soybean seeds business unit in Latin America, including a transformative acquisition. He subsequently joined Indigo Agriculture, where he built its microbials business unit from the ground up as VP, Europe Commercial Head.
Barrull holds a degree in Industrial Engineering from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and an MBA from IMD Business School in Lausanne.
About SICIT Group
Today, with more than 60 years of expertise, sales in over 80 countries, four manufacturing facilities, dedicated R&D laboratories and EcoVadis Platinum recognition for three consecutive years, SICIT Group ranks among the world’s leading developers and manufacturers of bioactive ingredients for agricultural biostimulants and high-performance retardants for the gypsum and plasterboard industry.
Built on circularity, industrial innovation and rigorous scientific validation, the company develops solutions that support more productive, resilient and sustainable agriculture while improving performance in industrial applications.
© 2026 SICIT Group
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