Latest news with #FutureForwardFactoriesIndia
Fashion Network
2 days ago
- Business
- Fashion Network
Indian textile giant Arvind and Fashion for Good unveil low-carbon textile factory project
Indian textile giant Arvind and Fashion for Good, a platform that brings together brands and manufacturers to promote sustainable innovation, plan to build a low-impact textile facility for woven and knitted cotton fabrics in Gujarat, western India. The project will establish an industrial unit that reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 93% compared to a conventional factory. Arvind and Fashion for Good also project that the facility will save 60 liters of water for every kilogram of fabric produced. The partners aim to create the industry's first near-zero carbon textile production facility. They view the initiative as the starting point for Future Forward Factories India, a program that accelerates the deployment of innovative textile manufacturing sites. 'By developing a master plan and partnering with Arvind to build a factory that addresses tier 2 manufacturing challenges, we can implement tangible solutions that drive systemic change,' said Katrin Ley, managing director of Fashion for Good. The partners announced the project at the Global Fashion Summit, a key event focused on sustainable innovation in the textile industry, held June 3–5 in Copenhagen. Fashion for Good, launched in 2017, counts major industry players among its participants, including Bestseller, C&A, Chanel, Inditex (Zara), Kering, Levi Strauss & Co., Norrøna, On, Otto Group (Bonprix), Patagonia, PVH Corp., Zalando, as well as Arvind, Birla Cellulose and PDS Limited.
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
EXCLUSIVE: Arvind, Fashion for Good's ‘Near-Carbon-Neutral' Factory Initiative Seeks to Break Industry Paralysis
What will it take for low-impact textile manufacturing innovation to operationalize and scale beyond the 'blah blah blah' of good intentions but lethargic action that has locked the industry in action-plan paralysis? Arvind Limited and Fashion for Good want to find out. The Indian production giant and the Amsterdam innovation platform are at the Global Fashion Summit in Copenhagen this week to solicit support for a new double-pronged initiative, dubbed Future Forward Factories India. More from Sourcing Journal 'The Buyer is God': How Unfair Purchasing Practices Occur 'With Impunity' in India's Garment Industry Labor Department, Which 'Ridiculed Supporting Worker Rights Abroad,' Responds to ILAB Lawsuit Shein's Climate Ambitions Have Been Validated. Now What? Its first part is something the sector is familiar with: an open-source blueprint featuring a portfolio of best-in-class technologies and emergent-but-tested solutions that could collectively slash greenhouse gas emissions at Tier 2 material production by as much as 93 percent. The second, perhaps less so. Arvind and Fashion for Good want to build a demonstration plant that would bring them jointly online, validating not only their environmental benefits but—more important, especially in these cash-strapped times—their business case. The idea, said vice chairman Punit Lalbhai, who oversees Arvind's textile, advanced materials, engineering and agriculture division, is to pivot away from pushing individual technologies' adoption to creating a bundled 'end-to-end concept' that can then be replicated by other suppliers looking to retrofit an existing facility or build one from scratch. Zeroing in on the second tier made easy sense because it's also the highest source of energy, chemical and water use. Emissions-wise, it accounts for 55 percent of the value chain's total pollution, according to numbers crunched by the Apparel Impact Institute. Despite its outsized attention, Tier 1's finished goods assembly, in contrast, contributes only 9 percent. 'I think nothing works better than seeing it with your own eyes and actually experiencing all the value creation that is promised,' Lalbhai said. 'Many of these concepts are innovations. And innovations, by their very nature, are inherently risky to some extent until you know they are proven at scale in real-world conditions without the safety net of small-scale pilot sponsorship.' The dearth of end-to-end demonstration that matches disruptive machinery with the energy transition is one of the reasons the industry gets stuck in pilot mode, said Katrin Ley, managing director at Fashion for Good. Supplying this 'missing step' could combat supplier fatigue, reduce capital and technology risk and overcome implementation challenges, she said. But there's a catch. Building the demonstration plant would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 million euros, or $34 million. Its establishment is still contingent on whether Future Forward Factories India can bridge the 25-30 percent funding gap that remains. Hence, the stumping for investors who can stoke the efforts of on-the-ground partners such as Bluwin, Wazir Advisors, Grant Thornton and Sattva Consulting. Already, the program has the backing of so-called 'catalytic' funders such as the Laudes Foundation, Apparel Impact Institute and IDH The Sustainable Trade Initiative. Finding more will help get the initiative over the finish line and create what Ley calls a multiplying effect that could extend beyond India. 'This is really about co-creation,' she said. 'In the past, we've talked about the issue of brands focusing on assessing suppliers, creating a plan of action, but then seeing the recommended solutions hardly implemented. We want to turn this around and start with, indeed, ambition from the supplier side, but then also to co-create this together with the brands. So both parties have to play a role in making this a reality.' The new factory is poised to save roughly 60 liters of water per kilogram of fabric while operating what Arvind and Fashion for Good say will be the industry's first 'near-carbon-neutral' textile production center. The aim is to churn out 3 million meters of fabric each month, whether natural or man-made, solid or print, knit or woven. Inefficiencies due to poor forecasting will be tackled by layering in more responsive, just-in-time manufacturing with the typical mass-scale production, which could help mitigate overproduction—another major contributor of emissions. Lalbhai estimates that it will take about a year to build, depending on where the facility will live and the type of existing utilities—ideally wind and solar—that it will be able to tap into. But they're ready to start work whenever the money to do so comes in. The blueprint has a more immutable deadline: September. Arvind and Fashion for Good aren't naming names right now but the technologies will span a gamut, from low-temperature enzyme pre-treatment to waterless dye carriers to heat and water recovery systems. Together they could drive as much as a 30 percent reduction in steam, 41 percent in water and 33 percent in electricity. Innovation will be behind the planned minimization of chemicals. A similar approach is set to improve wastewater quality so less treatment is required when it flows out of the plant. 'We have everything ready to go,' Lalbhai said. 'We have actually a few technologies coming in, irrespective of whether the funding comes or not. But we'd like to bring this life in its full completeness, so the funding is a very important piece for us to begin.' Future Forward Factories India also has a human component. A portion of the blueprint will be dedicated to helping workers achieve what is known as a 'just transition.' This means incorporating training and development in what Lalbhai described as a 'unversity-type situation' that can help upskill employees, allowing them to move into more sophisticated manufacturing jobs—or leave the textiles trade altogether. 'We are going to introduce programs that help people to go to better-earning opportunities, so that we have predictable, planned attrition with always a batch leaving and a batch coming, with the batch that's leaving at hopefully more than double the earning potential of the incoming batch,' he said. 'And I think it's also an opportunity to show how textile manufacturing, which is one of the largest employment creators in the developing world, has an opportunity to be rebranded in terms of how it's perceived as an employer.' Arvind and Fashion for Good are holding onto the hope that despite the economic tumult caused by geopolitical strife and exacerbated by President Donald Trump's whipsawing tariffs, brands remain committed to their climate targets despite the high investment costs and the less tangible payback. If nothing else, the initiative is 'super attractive' in terms of marginal abatement costs, said Ley, referring to the price of reducing one unit of carbon. The European Union's forthcoming carbon border adjustment mechanism, intended to place a fair price on the greenhouse-gas content of imported products at its border, could provide further tailwinds. While Lalbhai declined to name Arvind's buyers, only saying that it's 'very indexed' on North America, followed by Europe, the manufacturer appears on the public supplier lists of boldface names such as Gap Inc., Levi Strauss & Co., Hugo Boss and Marks & Spencer. Whether it can get the buy-in it needs is now the biggest question. 'We're trying to fast-forward the pace of change,' Lalbhai said. 'I think it's extremely important that we shed this idea of incrementalism and step into something that can bring change at the pace the world needs.' Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
