German sorting equipment supplier STADLER has designed and delivered a textile recycling plant for Italian recycling company IGERS s.r.l., which began operations in September 2026 in San Pietro Mosezzo, Novara Province, Piedmont, Italy. The plant is permitted to process 19,200 tonnes of post-consumer and post-industrial textile waste annually, with a capacity of 4 tonnes per hour. It is Italy's first facility covering all processing stages of textile recycling, converting waste into high-quality recycled fibers and opened material for the spinning industry, with full traceability throughout the process.

Key Points

  • The plant is located in San Pietro Mosezzo, Novara Province, Italy, began operations in September 2026, with an annual processing capacity of 19,200 tonnes and an hourly capacity of 4 tonnes.
  • STADLER provided the entire sorting line: 2 metering units, 2 TOMRA near-infrared (NIR) optical sorters, and 16 conveyor belts, configured as a two-stage sorting line.
  • The entire plant requires only 1 operator, and the process was independently designed by IGERS and patented in Italy, covering the complete flow from buffering, disinfection, sorting, tearing, to finished product output.

Plant Background and Process Features
IGERS has thus completed the transition from concept to industrial capability. The core of its process lies in integrating impurity separation, technology-based material sorting, mechanical regeneration, and digital traceability into a unified whole, rather than separate isolated steps, enabling more precise determination of each material stream's destination. This process has been patented in Italy.

The STADLER project proceeded in two steps: first, clarifying IGERS' goals, incoming material characteristics, and output requirements, based on which process flow diagrams were drawn and equipment selected; then, completing the overall layout design in conjunction with existing building conditions, integrating technology and hardware into an automated sorting system. Textile waste consists of a mix of different fibers, composite materials, accessories, and contaminants, with varying quality.

Why Textile Sorting Equipment Requires Special Design
STADLER project manager Matteo Zaninelli explained that textile materials are soft and elastic, with irregular shapes and sizes, prone to folding, overlapping, or tangling, posing a very particular challenge for material handling. Based on extensive joint trials with IGERS, the two parties determined the optimal solution for metering, conveying, and distributing textile materials; the position of the metering units and the shape of their distribution hoppers were specifically designed around material characteristics. He noted that these details may seem minor but have a significant impact on material flow stability and the performance of the entire sorting process.

How Two-Stage NIR Sorting Works
The sorting line's role is to prepare material for downstream recycling: the first-stage NIR sorter first separates single-component pure textiles such as 100% pure cotton and 100% pure wool from the mixed stream, with the separated high-value pure fractions entering buffer storage; the second mixed textile stream is then processed by the second sorter to remove impurities and non-compliant materials (e.g., hook fragments, leather). In the second stage, buffered material is recirculated through the same sorting equipment, and the NIR sorter re-sorts it by fiber type.

The entire line is fully automated, requiring only one plant manager to start and stop operations and adjust NIR sorter parameters as needed. The high sorting quality also allows different fiber fractions to be directed to different downstream processing routes. Flexibility was built into the plant design from the start: it can accommodate multiple incoming materials and throughput rates, and IGERS can independently decide the destination of each output stream—baling, entering a storage container, returning to buffer, or feeding into the fiber opening stage.

Industry Significance
In Europe, new requirements such as separate textile collection and extended producer responsibility (EPR) are driving demand for industrial solutions for sorting and high-quality recycling, and such infrastructure is moving from a semi-blank state toward standardization. IGERS CEO Gian Luca Miceli stated that the goal is to build the San Pietro Mosezzo plant into a leading industrial and technological platform, and to gradually expand to more recycling hubs depending on material supply, regional requirements, and demand for recycled materials. For STADLER, the project accumulated experience from previous textile sorting projects. Zaninelli judges that textile sorting and recycling will become increasingly industrialized, and sorting technology must evolve in sync with the recycling processes it serves—the ultimate goal being to separate textiles and deliver quality-stable, compliant materials to downstream.

Source: STADLER designs new textile waste processing facility in Italy · Originally published 2026-10-13