Italy has reached a notable milestone in sustainable materials management. On 21 September 2026, IGERS s.r.l. officially inaugurated the country’s first plant to encompass all treatment phases of textile recycling, located in San Pietro Mosezzo in the province of Novara, Piedmont. The ribbon-cutting ceremony was attended by Italian Environment Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, underscoring the national significance of the facility.
The plant was developed with STADLER Group — the globally active German company specialised in the planning, production and assembly of turnkey sorting plants — serving as the principal technology partner throughout the entire development process.
A Partnership Built on Shared Vision
STADLER’s involvement with IGERS extended well beyond equipment supply. The German engineering firm supported IGERS from the earliest discussions on process requirements all the way through to delivering a fully automated sorting line, including a plant layout specifically designed to fit within the existing building at San Pietro Mosezzo.
Gian Luca Miceli, CEO of IGERS, described the relationship clearly: “STADLER worked with us not simply as a supplier, but as a technology partner, understanding the specific requirements of a project that is both new and ambitious within the Italian context.”
STADLER also took on the task of integrating key treatment equipment purchased independently by IGERS, ensuring that each individual process step functions coherently as a single, unified system.
Scale, Investment and Regulatory Context
The San Pietro Mosezzo textile recycling plant operates at a capacity of 4 tonnes per hour and is officially authorised to process up to 19,200 tonnes of textile waste per year. The total investment in the facility stands at approximately €8 million, of which €1.3 million came through co-financing from Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR).
The plant produces high-quality flakes and frayed material suitable for the spinning industry, sourced from both post-consumer and post-industrial textile waste, with full traceability maintained across the entire process.
The launch of this textile recycling plant arrives as regulatory pressure intensifies across Europe. New requirements for separate textile collection and Extended Producer Responsibility frameworks are creating growing demand for industrial-scale solutions capable of sorting and preparing textile waste for high-quality recycling.
A Patented Process for a Complex Waste Stream
Textile waste is recognised as one of the more challenging materials in the recycling industry. It is highly heterogeneous — combining different fibres, composite materials, accessories and varying levels of contamination — and demands sophisticated handling at every stage.
IGERS addressed this challenge by designing its own complete process, which has been patented in Italy. The process runs sequentially from an initial buffer through sanitising, sorting and tearing, through to the final material output.
Miceli explained the thinking behind the design: “The distinctive value of our process lies in the integration of impurity separation, technology-based material sorting, mechanical regeneration and digital traceability. We do not consider these stages as isolated activities: they are parts of a single system that enables more accurate decisions to be made about the destination of each material stream.”
He added: “The opening of the San Pietro Mosezzo plant represents IGERS’ transition from vision to industrial capability.”
Engineering an Integrated Solution
Matteo Zaninelli, Project Manager at STADLER, explained how the collaboration took shape from an engineering perspective. “IGERS approached us looking for a reliable partner who could turn their ideas into a real, scalable industrial solution,” he said. “At the beginning, we focused mainly on the process: what IGERS wanted to achieve, the characteristics of the material and the required outputs. From there, we started developing the flow diagrams, selecting the most suitable equipment and finally, designing the complete layout around the available building. It was very much a step-by-step development, with IGERS bringing its knowledge of textile recycling and STADLER contributing its experience in plant engineering, material handling and sorting.”
The project required significant coordination across multiple suppliers, with STADLER managing interface requirements and harmonising existing components alongside its own scope of supply.
Understanding the Material
Textiles present handling challenges that differ substantially from other recyclable materials. As Zaninelli noted: “They are soft and flexible; they come in many different shapes and sizes; and they can fold, overlap or become entangled.”
To address this, STADLER conducted extensive trials at its Test Center, while IGERS simultaneously ran its own tests and contributed substantial practical knowledge from its experience in the textile sector. This joint effort helped define the most appropriate configurations for feeding, dosing, conveying and distributing textile material throughout the plant.
The positioning of the dosing units and the specific design of their distribution hoppers were developed with the behaviour of textile material as the guiding consideration. “These may seem like relatively small details, but they have a significant impact on the stability of the material flow and therefore on the performance of the entire sorting process,” Zaninelli noted.
The STADLER Sorting Line: Two-Stage NIR Sorting
Line Architecture and Function
The STADLER sorting line at the San Pietro Mosezzo textile recycling plant comprises two dosing units, two TOMRA NIR optical sorters and 16 conveyors. The line’s primary function is to prepare textile material for the subsequent recycling stages, with separation quality being particularly critical given that different textile fractions may require different downstream treatments.
The line also delivers a continuous, homogeneous material flow, creating stable and consistent conditions for downstream equipment and supporting both process efficiency and the quality of output fractions.
Stage One: Initial Separation
In the first sorting stage, the initial NIR optical sorter separates pure textiles — such as 100% cotton or 100% wool — from blended textiles and impurities. High-value pure fractions are directed to a buffer, while the second NIR sorter processes the remaining mixed stream, separating textile material from impurities and non-conforming items such as pieces of hangers and leather.
Stage Two: Fibre-Type Sorting
In the second stage, the buffered material is recirculated through the same sorting equipment, with the NIR sorters reconfigured to separate material according to fibre type. This two-pass approach allows for a higher degree of sorting precision within a single integrated system.
Built-In Flexibility
Flexibility was identified as a core requirement from the outset of the project. The plant is designed to accommodate different incoming textile streams and throughputs, while giving IGERS the freedom to direct each output fraction — whether to a baler, storage containers, a recirculation buffer or the fibre-opening process.
“This gives IGERS the possibility to adapt the plant to different materials and sorting strategies, which is particularly important in a market that is still evolving rapidly,” said Zaninelli.
The sorting line is fully automated and requires just one plant manager to operate, responsible for starting and stopping the line and adjusting the NIR optical sorter settings as required.
Looking Ahead: Scaling the Model
For IGERS, the San Pietro Mosezzo facility represents the foundation of a broader industrial strategy. “Our objective is to consolidate San Pietro Mosezzo as a leading industrial and technological platform,” said Miceli. “Building on this foundation, we intend to progressively develop additional recycling hubs, in line with the availability of material streams, regional requirements and demand for high-quality recovered materials.”
For STADLER, the project builds on experience from earlier textile sorting projects and further strengthens the company’s expertise in developing integrated solutions for textile waste sorting and processing.
Zaninelli reflected on the broader significance of the work undertaken: “The plant built for IGERS demonstrates that textile recycling requires not only high-performance machinery, but also a strong ability to integrate different technologies, specialised engineering expertise, and a plant design capable of adapting to complex and variable material flows.”
He added: “We expect textile sorting and recycling to become increasingly industrialized. Sorting technology has to develop together with the recycling processes it is feeding. Ultimately, our job is not simply to separate textiles, but to provide downstream processes with the right material, at the right quality, and in a consistent way.”
The circular textile economy is gaining industrial footing, and the San Pietro Mosezzo textile recycling plant stands as concrete evidence that the sector is moving from early-stage concept toward scalable, fully operational infrastructure.
