“Automation makes it possible,” says Martijn van der Zee, Purchasing and Sustainability Manager at C&A. The machines take over around 50 percent of jeans production. But C&A wants to increase the rate in cooperation with the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences and the RWTH Aachen University. And also pass on “the know-how gained” to “our producers in Asia” in order to improve productivity there too: “That was a driver for us to set up the German factory,” says van der Zee.
C&A has undertaken to take over all production from its subsidiary for a period of ten years. A (manageable) risk – and an experiment: the managers are banking on the trend towards more sustainability. The topic is important to younger customers. According to the “Global Sustainability Report 2021” by management consultancy Simon Kucher, every third German has reorganized his life in the past five years according to his “good conscience”.
