A little over three years have passed since RadiciGroup announced the acquisition of Zeta Polimeri, an Italian company headquartered in Buronzo (VC) with over 30 years’ experience in the recovery of pre- and post-consumer synthetic fibers and thermoplastic materials. Today, the company has become a full member of the group with its new name Radici EcoMaterials Srl.

The name quite aptly describes the nature of the company’s activities: indeed, Radici EcoMaterials occupies a position in RadiciGroup at the forefront of the recycling field, thanks to its cutting-edge technology that optimizes its high value-added sorting and recovery processes. The new company’s long-standing know-how, combined with RadiciGroup’s as a whole, will create a virtuous production system that recovers worn-out materials (fabric, yarn and granules), or otherwise unusable materials, and processes them into raw materials available for other production cycles by taking advantage of industrial synergy.

“This is truly a circular economy business,” Angelo Radici, president of RadiciGroup, emphasizes. “We collect scraps and waste from our group plants, as well as from external companies, and determine the most appropriate recycling destinations. RadiciGroup has already had some 40 years of experience in recovering post-industrial waste from all its processing activities and giving it a second life in the world of engineering polymers. Now, with the expertise of Radici EcoMaterials, we can also produce recovered materials of very high quality, nearly equal to virgin raw materials, ready to be used by our spinning lines to manufacture products that meet the textile market’s demand for low-emission, sustainable products.”

Radici EcoMaterials is a strategic production site because it handles all the preliminary recovery stages: the sorting, processing and pre-treatment of materials, including those used for the production of post-consumer yarns and engineering polymers. In this sense, Radici EcoMaterials is fully in line with the most recent European policies on sustainable textiles, which address minimizing the share of materials destined for disposal sites, favoring instead more structured recycling solutions.

“We can call our strategy a 360-degree approach to sustainability,” Maurizio Radici, vice president of RadiciGroup, adds. “In fact, owing to Radici EcoMaterials, we can now handle both pre- and post-consumer recovery activities and optimize the materials in a ‘zero waste’ operation. During the last few months, we have also invested in new technologies to further improve the quality of the products headed for our spinning lines – for both carpeting and textile applications – and to double the production capacity of the site.”