Roberto Salvati
Managing Director
Italy
Roberto joined Anthesis in 2018 as Director in the newly established Italian business (Anthesis Srl), with an office based in Rome. Roberto is a Senior Due Diligence and ESG professional, as well as a contaminated land specialist. He is experienced in supporting industrial, retail and financial clients with their challenges, whether it is developing their sustainability strategy, reviewing their portfolios and assets, sustainable performances, investigating and remediating a site, assessing environmental risks, or conducting M&A diligence works.
Prior to joining Anthesis, Roberto worked for ENVIRON (then Ramboll) from 2004 to 2018, during which he led the due diligence practice in Italy and conducted projects at industrial sites in a variety of sectors, including petrochemical, pharmaceutical, mining, petroleum refineries, disposal facilities and manufacturing (batteries, appliances, automotive, explosives and metal carpentry) across Italy and abroad. Roberto has been a Researcher at Roma Tre University and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Akron (Ohio, USA) and authored or co-authored more than 50 scientific publications on groundwater resources and environmental risks.
Roberto holds an MSc in Geology and a. PhD in Hydrogeology, both from the University of Rome La Sapienza, and a Masters in Sustainability Management from the Sole24 Business School. He has been a Registered Geologist in Italy since 2005.
Roberto has over 25 years of international scientific and technical experience in environmental disciplines. His expertise is in contaminated land and environmental due diligence (EDD), having led hundreds of Phase I & II EDD assessments, with emphasis on groundwater resources and contaminated land. He has conducted and managed projects at industrial sites, including in the petrochemical, pharmaceutical, mining, petroleum refineries, waste, and manufacturing (batteries, appliances, automotive, explosives, and metals) sectors. His experience involves soil and groundwater quality investigations and monitoring, remediation project design, and technical expertise in litigation proceedings involving contaminated land and waste management issues.
In an administrative case, Roberto led a technical team supporting a global company in a dispute with the Italian Ministry of the Environment. The Ministry claimed that emergency actions by the company to contain a contamination plume at a manufacturing site were insufficient and needed more extensive interventions. The company disputed this, stating the further remedial actions were unjustified and excessive. Roberto and the technical team used groundwater monitoring data to demonstrate that the emergency containment actions were appropriate to contain the plume and actively reduce the contamination source. As part of the appeal, Roberto assessed the “risk of remedy” intrinsic to the solution requested by the Ministry. The Client won the appeal.
Roberto was appointed as the expert in a criminal case against a pension fund concerning alleged waste mismanagement and abandonment, and resultant soil and surface water contamination. He led a technical team to reconstruct responsibilities, assess the extent and impact of contamination, and develop a cost estimate for disposal and clean-up. Roberto was also the nominated defence technical expert in proceedings concerning hazardous waste mismanagement and its impacts on surface and groundwater. He developed and executed an investigation, including sampling & analysis of waste stockpiles, soils, sediments, surface and groundwater and the analysis of soil and groundwater quality data. He prepared a remediation plan based on a Human Health Risk Assessment, which was approved by the administrative local authorities.
Roberto was also appointed in a civil case involving groundwater contamination at a chemical distribution warehouse site. Anthesis reviewed the appeal documentation and concluded that the appellant’s case did not prove the causal relationship between site activities and groundwater contamination beyond any reasonable doubt.