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CASALOLDO, Italy – September 7, 2026 – In hosiery, capital expenditure almost never makes headlines. A different yarn, a faster knitting machine, a new sleeve around the product: on their own, each looks like a rounding error. Put together over several years, they are how a mid-sized manufacturer defends a margin it cannot defend on price.

That is the logic behind the investment cycle now running at Calze G.T., the privately held Italian producer of the Relaxsan and Farmacell lines. Founded in 1984 in Casaloldo, in the province of Mantua — one of the world’s densest hosiery clusters — the company makes graduated compression stockings, posture products, massaging garments and body-wellness wear, and sells them into more than 65 markets.

The spending has gone into five buckets: cutting plastic out of packaging, building recycled materials into new products, replacing knitting machinery, funding R&D on yarns and construction, and hiring. None of them is a headline item in isolation. Together they describe a company converting four decades of process know-how into a cost and compliance position it can hold.

The packaging switch, and the regulation behind it

The most visible change is the one a customer holds. Calze G.T. has re-engineered almost its entire retail pack range, replacing conventional plastic sleeves with recycled paper.

That is not a procurement swap. Packaging on a compression garment has to survive production, warehousing, distribution and shelf life without compromising the product, which meant a technical development cycle before the changeover could be signed off. Shipping cartons have moved in the same direction, sourced from FSC-certified suppliers — a chain-of-custody standard that documents where the raw material came from and how the forest was managed.

The timing is not incidental. The EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation entered into general application on 12 August 2026, replacing a patchwork of national rules with a single, directly applicable framework covering packaging design, substances of concern, recyclability, recycled content and extended producer responsibility. Phased obligations run out to 2030 and beyond. For any manufacturer placing goods on the EU market, redesigned packaging has moved from a marketing choice to a documented compliance requirement — and companies that started the work early are absorbing it as a completed project rather than a deadline.

Energy and machinery: the capex line

Behind the packaging sits the harder spending.

Calze G.T. has installed photovoltaic capacity serving its facilities, taking a share of its electricity load off the grid — a meaningful hedge in an energy-intensive process, and in a country where industrial power prices have been among the most volatile in Europe.

In parallel, the company is progressively replacing its knitting park with latest-generation circular machines, specified for higher throughput and lower energy consumption per unit. Machinery renewal is the least glamorous line in a manufacturer’s budget and usually the most consequential: it sets the floor on unit cost, the ceiling on what the product team can actually build, and the speed at which either can change.

R&D as the growth lever

The demand side has shifted. Buyers of compression and posture wear increasingly weigh comfort, fit and technical performance alongside clinical function — the difference between a product bought once and one worn daily.

Recent output from the development pipeline includes:

• A new posture line — three shirts, an anatomical posture top, and a knee-high designed to stimulate proprioception and support postural stability starting from the foot.
• A lightweight cotton knee-high, built for warm-weather wear while retaining the technical construction and graduated compression of the core range.
• Ecofiber, a knee-high knitted from yarn recovered from recycled plastic bottles — the clearest example of the materials work feeding directly into a saleable SKU.

The through-line is that sustainability spending and product development are not separate budgets here. Recycled input becomes a product line; a packaging redesign becomes a compliance asset.

Headcount and the know-how question

The company has also been hiring, bringing younger staff into several departments alongside long-tenured teams.

For a manufacturer, this is a balance-sheet question that never appears on the balance sheet. Process knowledge in compression knitting is tacit, accumulated and hard to buy in; it sits with the people who hold it. Recruiting into that environment early — while the experience is still there to transfer — is how a company avoids paying for the same knowledge twice.

The investment scorecard

• Retail Packaging: The company has replaced almost all plastic sleeves with recycled paper across its retail packaging.
• Supply Chain: Retail and shipping packaging now comes from FSC-certified suppliers.
• Energy: A photovoltaic installation now powers the facilities.
• Machinery: The knitting park is being renewed step by step with the latest generation of circular machines.
• New Products: The lineup now includes a posture line and a lightweight cotton knee-high.
• Materials: An ecofiber line is knitted from recycled-bottle yarn.
• People: Young professionals have joined departments across the company, working alongside established teams.

What to watch

Calze G.T. is privately held, so there is no share price to read this against. The measures that matter are operational: how much of the plant load the solar installation covers, how far unit energy consumption falls as the machine replacement runs its course, and whether recycled-input lines such as Ecofiber scale from a single SKU into a range.

What is already clear is the direction. A regulation that arrived in August 2026 as a deadline for much of the market arrived here as a project that was already finished.

About

Calze G.T. is an Italian company based in Casaloldo, in the province of Mantua, specializing in medical stockings and performing compression seamless garments. Founded in 1984, the company distributes its products in more than 65 countries under its own brand names RelaxSan, FarmaCell, and Yaluronica, covering medical stockings, graduated compression socks, diabetic and sensitive feet socks, maternity underwear, orthopedic products, and shaping and slimming seamless underwear. The company also manufactures private-label compression stockings and seamless underwear for international brands, and holds CE marking as a Class 1 Medical Device manufacturer along with ISO 13485, ISO 9001, Oeko-Tex Standard 100, and FDA registration. All products are made in Italy.

To learn more, visit https://www.gtcalze.com/

Media Contact
Company Name: Calze G.T.
Contact Person: Mr. Max Ballasina
Email: Send Email
Phone: +39 0376 780686
City: Casaloldo
State: Lombardy
Country: Italy
Website: www.gtcalze.com