Nembri Silk

Three centuries of history in the silk business The land around Lake Iseo has a long tradition in the history of Italian silk. Today Matteo Nembri, a sixth-generation heir in the silk business and new CEO of Nembri Silk, renews it with his vision and a distinctive project. Around 1870 the first steam reeling mill was built in Iseo, to which many others followed: the production of a silk highly appreciated for its quality, thanks also to the special conditions of the lake’s water, which gave the product a special value. Iseo’s reeling mill La Filanda d’Iseo by Francesco Formenti was among the first to seize the opportunities of the new method: the basins, heated by a large steam boiler, in which the workers immersed the cocoon to obtain the thread and produce the silk skein. In 1938 the property passed to Pasquale Nembri, former director of the reeling mill. With a pioneering entrepreneurial vision, in 1960 Nembri flew to Japan and returned with new automated machines and a young engineer, Hideyhasu Segi, as a consultant for installing and starting the machines. For the rest of his life, Segi-san was a friend of the Nembri Family. Pasquale became Commendatore della Repubblica, Director of a bank, President of Italian Silk Industries. At his death his son Gianluigi first took over, then his nephews Giorgio and Andrea, who left the reeling mill of Iseo and moved the business to Capriolo, changing the name of the company, from Pasquale Nembri to Nembri Industrie Tessili, and moving the focus of the activity from reeling to twisting. In December 2015, the company passed to Matteo, son of Giorgio, and changed its name to Nembri Silk: the sixth generation is ready to pass on and to renew a tradition that the Nembri family has been keeping for 150 years.