When I arrive at the nature reserve, the LANIUS team, which arrived a few days earlier, is already preparing for the shoot and is already in full swing. And so my tour can start straight away with Eduardo, the General Manager at Candiani, who gives me a warm welcome. There is a lot to see, learn and discover on the large production site in the middle of the Parco de Ticino.

The nature reserve covers an area of more than 90,000 hectares, was founded in the 1970s and is one of the largest river conservation areas in Europe.

Eduardo tells me about the high environmental requirements that exist due to the company's special location. Candiani naturally has a plant for pre-treating the water on the company premises. The wastewater then goes to the municipal sewage treatment plant, which belongs to the municipality and in which Candiani itself is the largest shareholder.

Our tour then starts in the fiber warehouse, where the large fiber bales, primarily cotton fibers, from all over the world are stored. Here I also walk past our GOTS-certified bales, which we use exclusively for our Candiani denims.

From the fiber storage we come to a room where the bales are cut open and pulled apart to be processed into raw yarn strands. This raw yarn, or roving, is spun onto large spools, known as cones, and then, depending on the desired material mix, a thin elastane thread is added in the yarn machine, which is spun into the middle of the cotton fibers.

The yarn mixtures then go to the dyeing line. Here the yarn is pre-treated in a two-stage process before it is dyed. Depending on how dark the shade of blue is to be, there are five to 15 dye baths in which the yarns are dyed with indigo dye, then washed out and dried. The dyed yarn is then stretched back onto the warp beams and is now ready for the loom machines.

Candiani has a large number of looms - three old weaving machines are particularly interesting, traditional jeans looms that Candiani still operates. The large hall is in constant din. The machines are working and the typical denim look with the two different threads, the indigo thread in the warp and the cotton thread in the weft, is visible on the fabric surfaces. One floor down, in the basement, I see the woven fabric widths again: rolled up into huge rolls. Here, the finished fabric rolls are subjected to various finishing processes. For example, surfaces are flamed, heated and fixed.

Then, of course, we also take a look at quality assurance: Here, the rolls are examined very closely on large testing machines. Every meter is examined by the employees on the machine and marked as soon as a weaving error is discovered.

For our last stop, Eduardo takes me to the denim lab, where new denim washes and recipes are created and tested. It really is a science in itself. The whole range of possibilities is used, such as abrading and roughening the material with stones to lighten the denim.

On my tour, the high demands and standards that Candiani sets for its own production became apparent. It was an incredibly valuable experience to see everything up close and I felt the passion for the sustainable development of the GOTS-certified company at every turn.