In a phase of brilliant results and progress on the sustainability front, the Prada Group has chosen to accelerate on factories, those that have always represented its distinctive feature (today it has 24 production plants, 21 of which are in Italy) and which the founder and executive councilor Patrizio Bertelli, yesterday in the industrial headquarters of Valvigna near Arezzo, described how “the environment in which young people must be proud to work”, comparing them to “a family that must make people feel integrated, involved and responsible”.
«A factory with these characteristics also has greater profitability», commented Bertelli, praising manual labor and historical collaborators such as Lisetta, a 75-year-old lady who began with him in 1971 making belts, when there were only three of them (today the group has nearly 14,000 employees), and who still works as the manager of the clothing sample warehouse.
The visit to the Arezzo area, the homeland of Bertelli and the productive heart of Prada, shows the industrial strength of the fashion group – which directly produces about 30% – and the latest investment, the Levanella logistics hub which has eight buildings , for a total of 44 thousand square meters and 226 employees, and which became fully operational last December: here the final quality control of all Prada, Miu Miu, Church’s and Car Shoe productions takes place, both those made internally and those made from subcontractors, and from here bags, shoes, clothes and jewels go to shops all over the world and to final consumers who buy online.
After investing 70 million euros in 2022 in the vertical integration of the supply chain and in industrial and digital processes (such as 3D design), this year the Prada Group has planned 60 million investments that will serve – as explained by Lorenzo Bertelli, director marketing and corporate social responsibility, and Massimo Vian, industrial director – to double the size of the knitwear factory in Torgiano (Perugia); to install a fully automated line for the production of sneakers in the Levane plant (Arezzo), not very widespread in the world of luxury; to increase the production capacity and efficiency of the Limoges tannery in France; and to expand production in the bag factories of Scandicci (Florence) and Terranuova Bracciolini (Arezzo).
In 2024, then, a second leather goods factory will be built in Piancastagnaio (Siena), designed by Guido Canali who also designed the green headquarters of Valvigna and the logistics hub of Levanella, where personnel recruitment is already underway (in recent days the Prada Group announced the selection of 450 figures in the Italian production chain). The goal is to be more vertically integrated, quicker to access the market and increasingly sustainable.