Italian company gps designs and manufactures shopping bags – customised and standard, in plastic and paper, for volume products as well as for highly exclusive brands.

The town of Schio-Vicenza is located in the beautiful region of Veneto in Northern Italy, not far from Lake Garda at the foot of the Alps. Since medieval times Schio has been the centre of the Italian wool trade. Since 1976 Schio has also been home to gps, one of the world’s largest producers of shopping bags and labels. It goes without saying that quality wool products need stylish shopping bags. It all began with a request for a plastic shopping bag with stiff handles. The founder and owner, Mr. Daniele Grotto, saw the potential and started production. “At the time I had no idea what this was going to lead to,” says Mr. Grotto. “I had never been involved with shopping bags before. Back then the business was bags you carried in your arms, wrapping paper and flat-bottomed bags. Plastic shopping bags with integrated carrying handles had recently been introduced.“ gps never regarded Italy as its home market.

The scope of the business was European from the beginning, and today gps has grown to an operation with 28,000 m2 of production space and 30 automated production lines with a capacity of 2 million bags a day. But the road to success was not always smooth: “A challenge is an opportunity to grow,” says Mr. Grotto modestly. “In view of how we have grown, we have certainly encountered problems on the way – oil crises in the past and more recently a long period of recession.” gps commenced its cooperation with Korsnäs 15 years ago. It is a relationship that has steadily grown closer and over the years Korsnäs has become one of the main suppliers of gps. “We use more than 1,200 tonnes of sf White per year,” says Mr. Grotto.