We have always sought to create the best possible conditions in the workplace, assisting our employees both there and outside it, if necessary, with initiatives in various areas (partly described in the paragraph on “Our people”).

In our plants in Italy and Croatia, we have developed a safety at work monitoring system, integrated by software for system management and maintenance. Implementation of the INFOR safety and maintenance system has begun in the production sites in Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and Sri Lanka.

During manufacture, quality and process controls are carried out to monitor operation performance, which in addition to optimising resources, also aim to reduce second choices and, consequently, material wastage. The tests are tracked and saved for subsequent analysis with a view to assuring further improvement.

Each fashion hosiery article that contains new raw materials or accessories is sent, before entering production, to an external laboratory to be tested for safety and the presence of chemical substances that may be harmful or hazardous. Industrial production is only started upon successful completion of the analyses.

In all phases of work, the constant research into new industrialisation and mechanisation solutions helps us keep repetitive manual labour, which can cause problems for workers, to a minimum. We collaborate constantly with machinery suppliers to study new applications.

Oniverse collaborates with research institutes (eAmbiente and GSM Link) to identify technologies and strategies for the reuse of waste materials deriving from the processes.

Dye factories are amongst those with the highest environmental impact and we are therefore committed to minimising their negative effects. More specifically:

• we use recovery systems, reusing the heat of waste water from the dye cycle for subsequent production processes;
• we recover the heater fumes containing CO2 to regulate the pH of the water in the purifier, without using chemical acids;
• through studies and technological advances, we have successfully reduced water consumption in the dyeing phase. In the Tibel (Brentino Belluno) dye factory, for example, we have gone from consumption of 210 litres of water per kg dyed to today’s 50 l/kg. In the Ytres (Croatia) plants, we have more than halved consumption of exhaustion dyes, modifying the work cycles and products used to significantly reduce the quantity of water to be treated in the purifier;
• the sludge from the biological purifier is dried and reused in the cement production cycle, instead of ending up in a landfill. In 2017 alone, we avoided disposing of approximately 400 tonnes of sludge;
• all our waste, both liquid and gas, is analysed in-house every day and periodically also by independent certified laboratories, to verify compliance with regulations.