The Pasta Factory Donna Itriya is headquartered in Casteldaccia (Palermo), in the very district that, in the 20th century, during a glorious period for Sicilian art, welcomed the most relevant pasta manufacturing vocation. They produce pasta with 100% Sicilian wheat, kneaded with pure water and dried following the most ancient artisanal tradition. We interviewed Salvo Lo Monaco, partner, and General Manager, who told us about all the aspects of this four-star Italian company.
Mr Lo Monaco, could you please tell us how the idea of your factory was born? Which are your distinctive key points and values, beyond the strict bond to your land?
The Donna Itriya Project comes from the impulse of a close-knit group of entrepreneurs and professionals of the Sicilian panorama who have in common a sincere passion for our territory.
Our mission is to promote an authentic gastronomic culture which is its expression, giving birth to a product that is the symbol of excellence and distinctiveness, representative of the quality of contemporary gastronomic culture. “Donna Itriya” is a homage to “itriya”, born just in this area, to which we juxtapose a woman’s profile in our logo, a tribute to our land fertility and home to the most selected wheat.
The unity of purpose identified by this symbol is the desire to offer exquisite artisan pasta, produced with the semolina of the grains spontaneously growing on the island, kneaded with the patience of our master pasta makers who have loved taking care of this cultural, historical gastronomic richness for generations.
How come did you choose Storci? Which are the advantages of using our production lines? Please tell us about a point of strength that particularly hit you.
From the start, we aimed for excellence at every production stage; consequently, we could only choose Storci as a partner. As we manufacture a product with the artisan method, our goal was clear from the inception: to use remarkable performing machines to satisfy great production capacities and static dryers to comply accurately with the production settings. We achieved our result right from the testing phase. We are already looking toward the future: we are sure that our choice will allow us to increase production volumes while staying focussed on the artisan quality requirements of our products.
You are both businessmen as well as artisans. How can you balance attention for tradition and use of modern technologies?
Donna Itriya is the bearer of a tradition that has been ignored for so long: the honour and responsibility to bring back to light the fundamentals of the original Sicilian pasta-making art, aiming for perfecting it by state-of-the-art machinery, able to create a flawless manufacture, still respecting its deep artisanal characteristic. Donna Itriya is the story of the pasta origins in the world, modern revival of craftsmanship with a current entrepreneurial eye.
