MIC; Quality and Durability Are Our Drivers Towards Sustainability

From the early ‘900s till today…

The entrance of Cumerlato’s family in textile’s world dates back to the early 1900’s, when Mr. Giorgio Cumerlato in 1911 founded the “Cumerlato’s wadding factory” in Valdagno (Vicenza) to provide wadding to important local clothing manufacturers.

Interview with Mr Tommaso Cumerlato – CSO Chief Sales Officer of MIC Spa

MIC as one of the global yarn market leaders has a special focus on Eco-Friendly products, please let us know more about your range of eco-friendly yarns

The first goal towards sustainability was scored in MIC back in 2008 when we developed and launch our BIO-COTTON, the first GOTS-certified cotton sewing thread, obtained from organic cultivations. Furthermore, MIC presented LEAF, a polyamide sewing thread, derived from a polymer with enhanced biodegradability developed by Solvay, which degrades in 5 years if disposed in land-fill in anaerobic conditions.

Recently we introduced our GRS line, a range of recycled polyester yarns obtained from post-consumer packaging materials, certified GRS 2019-210 by ICEA, an agency that verifies the traceability of recycled raw materials and processing along the entire supply chain.

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Why our planet and future needs Eco-friendly yarns like biodegradable, organic and recycled? Why we should pay attention to sustainability?

As a member of a textile family group routed back at the earliest 1900, I fell to have a great chance, which I think none of my seniors ever had: veering the prow of our organization not only towards legitimate profit and sake of our group, stakeholders and customers but towards a goal that truly benefits everyone on this planet, first and foremost our children: the Sustainability of each of our acts.

And this is not just because more and more norms and regulations are making us commit to a more holistic approach, but mainly because it is our duty to find new solutions that preserve the life of man and the environment in the best possible way; this is why end customers, and above all the new generations, now demand it.

MIC offers more than 60 different yarn in 450 colours to the global textile market, could you please explain more about your R&D activities and latest innovations?

To research and develop new ways to achieve specific products and sustainable solutions for customers’ new needs and desires has become a priority for us for a long time.

We believe that quality and durability are drivers towards sustainability: consumers will always buy a product because they need and like it, but they increasingly will intend to use it for a long time, or for a longer time than the old items they used to buy. Long-lasting quality is a characteristic that has been partly forgotten and therefore guaranteeing it is not a goal sought after by all manufacturers, but this feature is re-emerging in the market.

Precisely for this reason, the customer’s attention will be directed not only to how a product is made, but more and more to the manufacturer, because buying a garment is like voting: is the maker an expert? Does he share my values? By buying this item, who am I supporting?

Being a manufacturer of sewing thread, and not a retailer for example, gives us these responsibilities and we are ready to fully meet them by continuing to research new raw materials, processes and solutions suitable for the market.

As a consequence, our R&D is constantly oriented to find the most reliable and professional solution in line with this fresh eco-sensitivity of the market: I’m speaking of solutions and not only products. We’ve recently renewed completely our most important department, the dye-house, according to more strict and higher standards in terms of resources’ consumptions on every level, from hydric to electric concern; we’ve installed since many years a solar-cell generator on the roof of our production headquarters in Verona, and just recently, thanks to the convinced initiative of our new CEO, we’ve embarked all our teams and staff, at every level, in a great challenge towards the Lean Management: isn’t it the best and more efficient way to optimize resources and energies?

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Could you please explain a brief about the recycled yarn production process from landfill to the cone?

Quite simply, for a sewing thread, everything starts with the collection of post-consumer packaging material, mainly PET bottles and other similar post-consumer recycled synthetic material, from which recycled polyester ‘chips’ are obtained for the production of textile fibres.

From this point, the material flow along the production steps is the same as for conventional virgin polyester yarn, but with one important peculiarity: each step in the supply chain must be recorded, filed, traced and periodically certified by one of the GRS certification bodies located all over the world.

Global Recycled Standard (GRS), certifies products made from recycled materials and production activities and enhances the value of products made from recycled materials, in compliance with environmental and social criteria extended to all stages of the production chain.

Reliability is the key to any sustainability claim: the GRS protocol works because every claim is officially certified at every stage of the supply chain.

Why customers should select MIC in the international market?

As a manufacturer or maker as I prefer to consider us, we have full control over all processes and, above all, over the most variable – and valuable – phase of yarn production: colour.

It’s not just a detail of a yarn: colour is often the heart of a customer’s request and therefore the core of our operations. Through our in-house dye works, both in Verona and Alessandria, we are able to offer maximum flexibility and responsiveness in terms of colour matching, for example in the growing demand for seasonal shades, which may vary season by season or collection by collection.

When it comes to sewing thread, consistency of colour batch after batch is the key to guaranteeing a designer continuity and colour fidelity across all garment production sites where his trousers or shirt might be sewn. Whether sewn in Tunisia, Romania, Egypt, Italy or Morocco, our 1490-tobacco colour code will always correspond 100% to the tobacco in our colour chart that the designer chose during his prototyping phase, perhaps in a studio in Milan or Paris a couple of months earlier.

About MIC:

The entrance of Cumerlato’s family in the textile’s world dates back to the early 1900’s when Mr Giorgio Cumerlato in 1911 founded the “Cumerlato’s wadding factory” in Valdagno (Vicenza) to provide wadding to important local clothing manufacturers.

Around the year 1940, following a furious fire that destroyed the factory, he moved to Verona where he began to manage the company that, in the meantime, had been transformed into a wool weaving factory. His son Pietro in the 60’s moved to a modern factory of 5000 square metres in Verona’s industrial zone;,
In the 70’s, after a first crisis, his sons Piergiorgio and Giovanni, gave birth to “Manifattura Italiana Cucirini Spa”, which operated in the field of production of industrial sewing threads.

After the explosion of major brands in Veneto area, MIC started to find its placement in the world of Jeans making and sportswear in general.

In 1986 the first internal dyeing was inaugurated and then, in 2010 the production site moving to Vallese di Oppeano,our current location, and there are a complete renovation of the dyeing’s and threads production’s machinery;
our actual plant site occupying an area of approx 10.000 square metres with a concentrate of German/Swiss technology for textile’s machinery and Italian technology for the dyeing one.

In the early 1990s, Mic began to expand commercially abroad, following the first stream of production’s relocation that interested the most important Italian and European manufacturers; so there was the birth of MIC Tunisia in 1990 and MIC Romania in 1995 followed by Croatia, Slovenia, Lithuania and Bulgaria.

The last foreign operation was the acquisition with Simest of a cotton sewing and textile wool manufacturing Factory in Egypt; the production site consists in a 10.000 square metres area with Italian technicians for cotton’s mercerization and dyeing exploiting the fact that Egypt is one of the best manufactures of the world in the production of high-quality cotton.
Today MIC follows the customers in Europe, Eastern country and North Africa, with a fast and accurate service coupled with a quality comparable to the best brand in the world.

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MIC – Manifattura Italiana Cucirini SPA
Via Spineta, n.61
37050 Vallese di Oppeano – Verona
Phone: +39 045 7134725
FAX: +39 045 7134104
E-mail: [email protected]