Biella, the textile district pioneers the traceability passport
Sustainability at the heart of corporate strategies: from budgets to ethical codes, from energy to supply chain pacts, the area is a laboratory of innovation
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Talking about sustainability in Biella is an everyday occurrence. Haute couture and luxury brands, for which the Piedmontese textile district is a supplier, have been demanding certified products along the entire supply chain for several years now; Europe, for its part, sets targets that the textile world cannot ignore, but then again, the idea of controlled production, with a lower impact on the planet, is a theme that many companies in the area have embraced from the very beginning. All this makes Biella an area in the vanguard, where sustainability reports and codes of ethics have long since become part of company routines.
Tessilbiella, a company in Vigliano Biellese with almost 70 years of history and a production capacity of one million metres of fabric per year, for example, recently exceeded 40 per cent certified products out of its total production. "More and more brands demand certified materials and compliance with certain standards. The brands we work for have to account for their environmental impact," says Linda Crosa, one of the youngest voices in the company founded by her grandfather Adriano Crosa.
"I believe that we, like most of the Biella district, have been able to move ahead on these issues precisely because of the high range of products for which we are suppliers," he says, "but I also think that sustainability is a tool to improve the efficiency of a company: any entrepreneur is interested in consuming less water and less energy because in the long run it decreases costs.
As of 1 January 2025, Tessilbiella has decided to purchase energy only from certified renewable sources; a part of it is produced directly with panels on the roofs of its factories. This experience has enabled the company to become part of several pilot projects. The Biella area, in fact, with Città Studi, an ITS dedicated to textiles and many companies with a research and development department, is a privileged place for experimentation.
Here, in 2022, MagnoLab was born, a network of companies conceived by six companies in the Biella textile sector that in Cerrione created a research and development centre available to companies - not only in the area - that can work on innovative processes according to the principle of 'innovation as a service'. The initial investment was around EUR 10 million; today, with investments exceeding EUR 15 million, there are 21 companies in the network, covering every aspect of the production process, from the yarn to the finished garment.
