Pamela Lin

Sustainability is becoming a constant theme in every industry, and garment hangers and packaging, which most of us take for granted, are no exception.

Italy-based Mainetti Group, a global manufacturer of garment hanger and packaging, has embraced the concept of sustainability to revolutionize the manufacturing industry by recycling hangers and making them with eco-friendly materials.

Unlike Italy’s meticulous craftsmanship and luxury brands, which are known far and wide, hangers that go with these luxury garments draw little attention, but they are necessary to present garments well.

Established in the 1960s in a small town in northern Italy, Mainetti was founded by four brothers who recognized an increasing demand of high quality and ergonomically designed hangers. At that time, the market was dominated by wooden hangers, which were expensive and bulky.

Meanwhile, the company had begun its groundbreaking attempt to recycle hangers on behalf of its customers to minimize the carbon footprint, and from the mid-1980s, the company began managing reuse programs for its clients.

Mainetti is also a pioneer in adopting a “circular economy” in which resources are used for as long as possible to reduce waste, and then can be recycled and reused. In the system, biodegradable and eco-friendly materials are introduced that cause no harm to the planet.

As for nondegradable plastics, the group recycles and reuses them to make recyclable hangers, which are cheaper and more durable.

“Plastic is not a bad thing. It’s the one-time misuse of it which causes the problem,” Mainetti CEO Roberto Peruzzo said.

In the beginning, when customers asked Mainetti what they should do with the hangers after they sold the garments, “We said, ‘Don’t worry, we can take them back and make a new hanger or reuse it in the circle,’ ” he said.

Promoting the circular economy worldwide and also domestically through Mainetti’s global networks, the group set up branches, including recycle units and factories across the world, including China, the US and Europe, to ensure the locally recycled materials were being remanufactured into hangers and redistributed into the system.

“We can recycle the hangers 10 times or even more. The amount

of carbon footprint being reduced is tremendous,” Peruzzo said.

“The retailers work with us in the circular economy and we make sure that the hangers are made in a way to have the minimum impact in terms of carbon footprint,” he said. From the collection to inspection, the local factory sorts out the qualified hangers, repacks them, and then reintroduces them into the supply chain.

Mainetti produces about 1.2 billion hangers annually while recycling 700 million hangers, Peruzzo said.

Dating back to the 1980s, when China had just unveiled its reform and opening-up policies, Mainetti noticed a promising market that had enormous potential, and the group saw Hong Kong as an entry point for an even broader market.

The reform and opening-up policies, including export-oriented policies, were transforming China’s coastal cities into a cluster of garment and textile manufacturing bases.

Mainetti UK began exporting hangers to Hong Kong for the Chinese mainland distribution in 1987. In 1989, Mainetti began setting up manufacturing facilities in southern China.

In 2001, China became a member of World Trade Organization, and Mainetti saw garment manufacturers moving from Europe and other Western countries into China. “Then we thought the garment and textile industry in China will be booming as well as in Asia,” Peruzzo said.

In 2005, Mainetti opened its largest manufacturing center in Shenzhen, a site ideally located to supply customers located all over Asia.

“The branches in China then served for both exporting and serving domestic market,” Peruzzo said. He added that the annual turnover in China is over 1 billion yuan ($144 million).

Peruzzo sees the role China takes in the group’s global strategy shifting from a single manufacturing center to a major base in Asia taking diversified responsibilities.

“Looking into our operation in Shenzhen and Hong Kong, now I see them as the leading centers for our new technology and for the development of our Asia market,” Peruzzo said. He added that most of the automation Mainetti deploys is from China.

In addition, Mainetti has a group of experts based in China doing research and development by using the available resources on green, sustainable and compostable materials.

In Mainetti’s Shenzhen unit, the group is developing a new generation of hangers using cellulose pulp material that is ground from paper.

Not merely recycling hangers and reusing plastics to make hangers, Mainetti cooperates with material research companies and startups to come up with brand-new eco-friendly materials.

Nano and Advanced Materials Institute Ltd, a material research center funded by the Hong Kong Science Park, is one of Mainetti’s partners.

The retail solutions provider also works with institutions to develop their ongoing research and development process. Due to the fullscale facilities at the factories in southern China, Mainetti also gets to test the feasibility of the materials.

“And Shenzhen is where we get the best chance to deploy the latest technology in different fields” Peruzzo said.

Inside Mainetti’s largest manufacturing facility in Shenzhen, there is a new center offering a hands-on environment for interacting with the latest end-to-end retail services.

The radio-frequency identification (RFID) system in the center lifts the efficiency and accuracy of stock-in and stock-out process. Compared with the bar-code labels and scanning, RFID system digitizes the inventory management and sharply reduces the manpower as the RFID tags can be detected and read remotely and simultaneously.

Moreover, the information collected enables detailed trend analysis for product profiling and optimizing product displays and placement in the store.