Major business award for HeiQ CEO
Chief executive and co-founder of textile technology developer HeiQ, Carlo Centonze, has been named as the winner of a prestigious business award.
Consultancy firm EY, which runs Entrepreneur Of The Year competitions in many countries around the world, has announced Mr Centonze as the winner in the Industry, High-Tech & Life Sciences category of this year’s competition in Switzerland.
EY said HeiQ had been an innovator in textiles since its launch in 2005, developing functional materials such as fabrics that kill viruses or filter oil from seawater, leading to “a strong debut” on the London Stock Exchange in 2020.
On presenting the award, EY said Mr Centonze had consistently demonstrated a “tenacious inventive spirit, which has driven him from the early days as a startup to become an international innovator”. Reacting to this, Carlo Centonze told sportstextiles that the award was for the whole HeiQ team and was recognition of a collective effort rather than for anything he had done personally.
Just before the awards final in Zurich at the end of October, HeiQ formally launched a new cellulosic yarn, AeoniQ, that it says has the qualities, affordability and scalability potential to replace all of the polyester and nylon currently in use in apparel manufacture across the world.
IMAGE: The winners of the 2021 EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Switzerland awards, with HeiQ’s Carlo Centonze in the centre.
CREDIT: EY.
