“We are not a laundry but specialists in particle decontamination“, He points out Milena Baroni, CEO of Mycroclean Italia. Yet the proud entrepreneur from Gorgonzola also tells us that her business was born just like laundry in the 1950s and only later did it become a supplier to aerospace and semiconductor companies.
“My grandparents were already advanced at the time and provided home services. Then in 1986 my father, who was an engineer, together with my mother decided to take up the challenge of a client company: in addition to traditional cleaning, it needed decontamination “. And so the engineer Baroni designs and manufactures a decontamination machine so advanced that even today the industrial secret of its operation is rigorously guarded. “I can only say that we are the only ones to carry out this process in a single cycle; over time there have been technological updates but the conceptual substance has remained unchanged ”, explains Baroni.
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“Since 2003, I has done nothing but continue and expand the family business by also applying a new work model. I have a team of 25 very good women and the training is totally internal “.
What is decontamination for?
Decontamination is a process that generically aims to eliminate the contaminating effects of biological or chemical substances. In this case, Mycroclean Italia focuses on meeting the needs of the companies operating in the aerospace and semiconductor sectors: basically those who produce satellites and processors or generically chips.
It happens to come across stock photos showing men and women in white overalls sitting at workstations operating on Lilliputian-sized chips. Well, in those environments enemy number one is dust, the dust. “We decontaminate these suits made from a kind of nanotechnological fabric from dust particles larger than 0.5 microns (a hair is 75 microns, ed.) because they can be harmful to the microchip circuits. For example, they could prevent an impulse from activating a command ”, points out the entrepreneur. In summary it is an important service of great responsibility and in fact in the world there are only fifteen companies specialized in this activity.
The journey of clothing
Mycroclean Italia has European customers because it currently has a single office in Gorgonzola, about twenty-two kilometers from Milan. The service includes a phase of collection of garments (sealed in plastic crates) by courier and then an on-site procedure that starts with washing, then sanitization and bio-decontamination. Obviously, a check is also carried out on the entire surface to identify any signs of wear or tears. Then we proceed with the particle decontamination in a single cycle with the company’s proprietary machinery.
The establishment is equipped with clean roomthat is to say clean rooms with a very low level of dust microparticles in suspension. Furthermore the ventilation is laminar flow to ensure sterility, such as in operating theaters. Workers wear protective suits with masks.
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“In these days we have received a request from a multinational that is also based in India, but we tend to serve Italian and EU companies. For Switzerland, considering the customs problems, we are thinking of opening a branch ”, explains Baroni.
Couriers deliver on a weekly basis, but a single suit takes about two and a half hours of work – from the first check to the final vacuum packaging. You wouldn’t think a lot if you consider that in a traditional laundry you travel about 40 minutes just for washing.
In the Financial Times Top 1000
Mycroclean Italia was recently included in the Financial Times ranking dedicated to European companies with the highest growth rate. At the same time he also got the prize The Fonts Awards come Excellence of the Year 2022 in the field Healthcare & Pharma DPI.
All this success is due to the concomitance of several phenomena. The first is that the multiplication of private aerospace companies contributed to a sharp increase in business. Secondly, the pandemic has stimulated demand for new products, such as the eco-friendly line of Mycroclean masks – which offer slightly more protection than FP2 and can be washed up to 500 times. Their production has in fact increased from 50 thousand pieces a year to 70 thousand a week.
“Despite the reduced obligations we continue to receive good orders and no doubt someone is using them to protect themselves from pollen. And anyway, they can be washed and put away in the drawer. With all the ones we sold, we saved 700 tons of waste ”, concludes Baroni.