101 Old Mill Road
Building 300
Cartersville, GA 30120
Tel. 678-535-5341
[email protected]
www.piananonwovens.com


Piana Technology’s roots date all the way back to the 16th century. Tintoria Piana has been in business continuously since 1582 and the Piana family is recognized in Italy as the oldest textile family. The Piana family came to the U.S. from Italy in 1995 to open a dye house in Cartersville, GA to supply apparel producers in the U.S. The business grew in the U.S. until China entered the World Trade Organization in 2000. At this point, garment manufacturing largely migrated from the U.S. to markets in Asia, Central America and Mexico.

Andrea Piana, CEO, led the company through the downturn and pivoted its business to fiber processing for the healthcare industry and began producing fire retardant fibers for the bedding industry. In 2015, the Piana’s built its first nonwoven plant in Cartersville with vertically lapped and cross lapped nonwoven capabilities. As demand for nonwovens grew, in 2019 it opened a second nonwoven plant in San Luis, AZ, enabling a more efficient footprint to serve its national bedding customers.

In 2019, Piana opened a second fiber treatment plant in Cartersville to focus on fire retardant fiber treatment for the automotive industry. The plant processes about 20 million pounds of garment cut scraps per year, adding value for its tier one automotive suppliers. With patented ecological manufacturing technologies, the company has initiated a path as an R&D-focused company with a focus shifted toward sustainability.

In 2021, Piana built a digital printing facility in Cartersville. The wide-web digital printing line allows for chemical deposition of various types with focus on adding function and value to its nonwoven substrates. Piana’s current fiber treatment capabilities include fire retardant, dyed, bleached, cationized, antimicrobial and scoured. The company produces fire-retardant fibers and make barrier fabrics for bedding in its two nonwoven plants. It has carded, thermally bonded nonwoven technology with vertically lapped and cross lapped capabilities and is working toward making foam obsolete.

“We believe that our proprietary, innovative technologies for molding nonwovens are the future of sustainable molding, enabling complex geometries not previously possible with a totally recyclable, reusable alternative to polyurethane foam,” says Andy Hollis, general manager.

Piana’s primary markets are bedding, automotive, hygiene, filtration, apparel and acoustics. “Most treated fibers not used internally in our nonwoven products go to other nonwovens companies for various applications,” Hollis says. “We work directly with many apparel brands on our dyed and cationic fibers and see tremendous opportunitiesy to exploit our proprietary cationic fiber treatment, to dramatically reduce water used in downstream processing.”

According to Michael DeFranks, head of Strategic Development, the Covid-19 pandemic and its associated supply chain issues have impacted Piana’s bedding and automotive businesses; although, both remain strong, valuable components of its sales portfolio. “We continue to innovate our way through adversity and have developed a host of new business opportunities where we can export new technologies into new markets. Markets with high growth potential include polyurethane foam replacement, molding, filtration, acoustics and insulation.”

Pending investments to support its proprietary nonwoven molding operations as well as equipment investments to allow the company produce consumer end products are on the horizon. “Additionally, we remain focused on continuous improvement strategies to improve quality and yield, to ensure that we utilize our existing assets to their greatest potential,” DeFranks says.

Piana sees tremendous growth opportunity within the nonwovens industry and remains bullish about its plans for future growth.

“Through an ongoing, iterative approach to product and process development we continue to open doors to new business areas where nonwovens are not currently used,” DeFranks adds. “We believe that the future use of nonwovens will offer sustainable alternatives to the outdated materials of the 20th century and are excited to introduce the next uncommon solution to our customers’ common problem.”