On 7^th July, a group of FRISSBE researchers and interns travelled to Potpićan, Croatia, for a visit to the ROCKWOOL Adriatic factory. The group included Dr Andrea Lucherini, Dr Aleš Jug, Dr Andrea Jurov, Kirils Simakovs, and Jonay Brito, alongside David Turk, French engineering students Martin Balesme and Pierre Meslin from Polytech Angers, and IMFSE interns Saba Sinaei and Ebrahim Frough.

The group was warmly welcomed by Anđelka Toto Ormuž, Corporate Affairs Manager at ROCKWOOL Adriatic, who opened the day with a comprehensive presentation of the factory and its operations. The visit then continued with a guided tour of the production facilities, offering a first-hand look at the large-scale manufacturing processes behind one of the most widely used insulation materials in the world.

In the second part of the day, the focus shifted to knowledge exchange, with two presentations delivered by the FRISSBE team to ROCKWOOL Adriatic staff from human resources, marketing, and technical departments. Dr Aleš Jug, Head of the Department for Fire-Safe Sustainable Built Environment at ZAG, presented the work of the department and the FRISSBE project, providing an overview of the unit's research and innovation activities. Dr Andrea Lucherini then presented ZAG-FRISSBE's research towards a fire-safe sustainable built environment, covering experimental work, ongoing projects, and the connections between building materials, fire performance, and sustainability.

For the researchers, the visit offered valuable context for their laboratory work. As Kirils Simakovs noted, understanding how mineral wool is produced helps make sense of the specific characteristics observed during fire testing and the relationship between manufacturing processes and experimental results. Dr Aleš Jug reflected on the broader importance of such exchanges: from a research perspective, learning about new processes, materials, and products improves the team's understanding of what is coming to market and how ZAG can contribute to improving fire safety through guidelines and collaboration with industry.

Dr Andrea Lucherini, visiting for the second time, highlighted the fundamental importance of the connection between research and industry. In his view, real progress in fire safety can only happen when science and industry work together, developing materials and products that perform not in ideal laboratory conditions but in the real buildings where people live and work. He also underlined the importance of ensuring that the knowledge generated through research reaches the end user, given that fire safety is not simply a set of rules to follow, but a nuanced set of considerations that vary across different buildings, systems, and products.

The visit is the latest expression of the growing collaboration between ZAG-FRISSBE and ROCKWOOL Adriatic, and reinforces the value of connecting fire safety research with the industrial realities of material production. FRISSBE thanks Anđelka Toto Ormuž and the entire ROCKWOOL Adriatic team for their warm welcome and hospitality.