In a small corner of rural Taiwan, amid other textile dyeing houses and small factories, start-up Alchemie Technology is in the final phase of implementing a project that it claims will revolutionize textile industry world and will reduce its carbon footprint.
The UK-based startup has targeted one of the dirtiest parts of the textile industry – fabric dyeing – with the world’s first digital dyeing process.
“Traditionally, to dye fabrics, the fabric is immersed in water at 135 degrees Celsius for about four hours, that is, liters and tons of water. For example, to dye one ton of polyester, 30 tons of toxic wastewater is generated,” Alchemie founder Dr. Alan Hudd explains to me.
“It is the same process that was developed 175 years ago in the northwest of England, in the cotton mills of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and we export it,” he points out, first to the United States and then to factories in Asia.
According to the World Resources Institute, a nonprofit research center based in the United States, the clothing industry uses approximately five trillion liters of water each year simply to dye fabrics.
The industry, in turn, It is responsible for 20% of the world’s industrial water pollution, while also using vital resources such as groundwater in some countries.
It also has a huge end-to-end carbon footprint, or about 10% of annual global emissions, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.
Alchemie says its technology can help solve that problem.
Their machine, called Endeavor, can compress the dyeing, drying and setting of fabrics into a much shorter, water-saving process.
Endeavor uses the same principle as inkjet printing to quickly and accurately apply dye onto and through fabric, according to the company.
The machine’s 2,800 dispensers fire approximately 1.2 billion drops per linear meter of fabric.
“What we are doing is recording and placing a drop, a very small drop, precisely and accurately on the fabric. And we can turn these drops on and off, like a light switch,” says Dr. Hudd.
Alchemie points out that this process allows for great savings: it reduces water consumption by 95%, energy consumption by up to 85% and works three to five times faster than traditional processes.
The company, which was initially developed in Cambridge, is now in Taiwan to see how Endeavor works in a real environment.
“The UK is very developed in R&D projects and inventing new things, but, without a doubt, if you want to go to commercialization, you have to go to real factories,” explains Ryan Chen, Alchemie’s new chief operating officer. , which has experience in textile manufacturing in Taiwan.
Alchemy is not the only company trying a virtually waterless dyeing process.
Chinese textile company NTX has developed a heatless dyeing process that can reduce water use by 90% and dye by 40%, according to its website, and Swedish start-up Imogo uses a “spray application digital” with similar environmental benefits.
NTX and Imogo did not respond to the BBC’s interview request.
Kirsi Niinimäki, a design professor researching the future of textiles at Aalto University in Finland, says the solutions offered by these companies look “quite promising,” although she adds that she would like to see more specific information on issues such as the fixing process. and long-term studies on fabric durability.
But although it is early, Niinimäki indicates that companies like Alchemie They could bring real changes to the industry.
“I think all these types of new technologies are improvements. If you can use less water, for example, it of course means less energy and maybe even less chemicals, which is certainly a huge improvement.”
In Taiwan, there are still some problems to be solved, such as operating the Endeavor machine in a warmer and more humid climate than the United Kingdom.
Alchemie service manager Matthew Avis, who helped rebuild Endeavor at its new factory location, discovered that the machine must operate in an air-conditioned environment, an important lesson given the large amount of garment manufacturing it It is made in South Asia.
The company also has big goals for 2025. After its trial with polyester in Taiwan, Alchemie is heading to South Asia and Portugal to test its machines, also with cotton.
Y They’ll have to figure out how to expand Endeavor.
Large fashion companies like Inditex, which owns Zara, work with thousands of factories.
Your suppliers They would need hundreds of Endeavors working together to meet their demand for fabric dyeing.
And that’s just one company – there will be many, many more that will need it.