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FELT SPECIAL >>


Cortadoria Nacional de Pêlo, which specialises in the manufacture of fur felt material for the hat industry. fepsa produces both fur and wool felt


hat bodies, although on different scales. “We are a main player for fur felt, but one of the smallest for wool felt,” says CEO Ricardo Figueiredo. “The ratio between wool and fur felt at our factory is about 10 to 90. Our wool felt production is very small compared to other factories such as in South America. That said, we have a big demand in Europe for wool felt as well.” For a company that produces quite an ancient product that has hardly changed in the past few centuries, the factory looks very up-to-date. “We try to be a modern factory and always keep innovating and rethinking how things can be improved,” says Ricardo. “As such, we invest a lot in new machines. You don’t realise how much has changed in a few years’ time, as we are working on improvements all the time. We have a good team of mechanics and engineers who try to come up with better solutions every day. It would be nice, though, if we had a factory that would be double this


size. But we haven’t. Therefore, when space is limited, you need to be more efficient. So we try to be like that.” The amount of energy that a factory needs is always a challenge – and now more than ever with the current energy crisis. Luckily, two years ago, fepsa invested quite a bit in photovoltaic power. “We get 370 kilowatts from solar panels which we installed, as many as we could, on the south side part of the roof. It was supposed to be an investment with a payback time of five years, but with the current energy prices we expect to have our money back much sooner. “We also use biofuel


– wood and pallets – as a renewable source of energy. Portugal has a lot of forests that produce timber cuts when trees are cleaned out, and the pallets are by-products from other industries. We try to save water as much as we can as well. In the dyeing process – a big consumer of water in the factory


Halfway through the production process


“We have an ongoing evolution in terms of technology, which is driven by our own curiosity and willingness to improve but also by our customers who ask for specific improvements”


– we only use about one third of the hat industry standards with simple measures like using smaller tanks. The less water we use, the less fuel we need to heat the water: it is as simple as that. We reuse very little of the water, but we recover heat from the wastewater. It is hot when it comes from the dye house and can be used to heat the fresh water that comes into the factory.” For fepsa, innovation and sustainability have always gone hand in hand. “The certificate we have for quality and environmental management is important for us, but we have gone a step further in the last few years,” says Ricardo. “We have several customers in high-end fashion who have the same concerns as we do. This creates


good synergy. We learn a lot from them because they do audits in our factory. They visit our suppliers, such as rabbit farms, with us to check animal welfare, for example. It is very important to have this transparency and that customers can see the supply chain all the way up. We have an ongoing evolution in terms of technology, which is driven by our own curiosity and willingness to improve but also by our customers who ask for specific improvements.” The requests from customers have


also changed in other ways. They start asking for more diversity in terms of product range and smaller quantities per item. “Which does not mean that they order less,” says Ricardo. “We are seeing higher quantities but this is split by more diversity within the products: quality, weight, size, and colour especially. Therefore we need to be flexible in terms of producing smaller quantities at the same cost. To be able to do that we have to make changes in our organisation. We have a very good information system to support this, but we also need to change some equipment in order to process smaller quantities and still be efficient.” As indicated, fepsa’s customers overall tend to order higher quantities compared to a few years ago. So it is no surprise that production is back to the level of 2019, or actually above that. “We could easily expand our production in


Before (front) and after (left) pressing the crown of the capelines


52 | the hat magazine #95 The thickness of each hat body is checked separately


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