Blue Cast: Alice Tonello on Tonello’s ‘Laundry (R)evolution’
Blue Cast is a podcast series from the TENCEL™ Denim team. Each episode features a conversation with a special guest from within the industry or the fringes of the denim community. The following is a recap of episode 406.
One of the most rapidly changing areas of denim manufacturing technology is wet and dry processing. With pressure to reduce water, harmful chemicals and energy use, laundries are stepping up with innovations that deliver the looks designers want without negative environmental impacts.
Sustainability has been a cornerstone of Tonello since the family business began over four decades ago. The company was established near Venice in Northeast Italy, an area that was conveniently also the birthplace of brands like Diesel and Replay.
“Our focus, it was always to reduce the consumption, because we focus on the efficiency of technology,” said Alice Tonello, marketing and R&D manager at Tonello and the niece of the company’s founder. “And of course, today is easy for others to have a sustainable or responsible approach in the finishing of a pair of jeans.”
On the latest episode of our Blue Cast podcast, Alice discussed Tonello’s latest solutions with Lenzing’s Tuncay Kilickan. At ITMA, Tonello will showcase what it is calling a “Laundry (R)evolution” that covers everything from garment dyeing to finishing.
For garment dyeing, Tonello is debuting DyeMate technology, which makes indigo garment dyeing more sustainable and reproduceable.
On the finishing side, the Laser Dual has two laser sources to speed up the process. In just a few seconds, both the front and back of a pair of jeans can be laser finished. For table lasering, Tonello’s Be On Point automatically detects jeans and their position.
Getting lasering to better mimic hand-done finishing techniques is partly about materials and the machines used, but Alice noted it’s also about the laser designer. Tonello’s CREA software is designed to be user-friendly and help customers get the same result as manual processes.
In laundry, Tonello’s All-in-One has sustainable features addressing aspects like water usage. All-In-One also features NoStone, an abrasive drum that can create stonewashed looks without pumice stones. For laundries that already have Tonello machines, the new washing systems can be retrofitted to update older models. “We like to say that a Tonello machine never gets old, but evolves,” said Alice.
Tonello’s Metro software connects to its machines to show the water and energy consumption in real-time.
Having more sustainability information is crucial for reaching younger generations of consumers. “The new generation likes to understand a little bit more what they are buying and also the value that the product has,” said Alice. She added, “We need to restart the from the quality, the transparency, also to have more real data on what we are wearing.”
Listen to the full conversation here.