Kering, Johnstons of Elgin join Spiber circularity solution

Luxury giant Kering, plus Johnstons of Elgin, Eilen Fisher and DyStar have joined forces with Spiber “to build a global circularity solution for transforming end-of-use textiles and agricultural by-products into new material”.

They said late last week at the Biofabricate Paris Summit that they’re aiming to “propel society towards the creation of fully circular textile products that can be regenerated at an industrial scale into Spiber’s innovative Brewed Protein materials at the end of their lifecycle”.

Kering is involved via its Material Innovation Lab (MIL) and has joined Spiber’s “revolutionary” biosphere circulation project that’s “dedicated to transforming unused apparel and textiles, as well as agricultural byproducts, into nutrients for microbial fermentation and production of novel protein materials”. The end result should be a whole new raft of fibres that can be made into clothing textiles.

Spiber is also calling on other industry stakeholders to join the project following the arrival of the latest quartet of businesses, which joined Goldwin and Pangaia, both of which signed up last June.

It said the brands’ participation in the project “will provide multi-faceted support, including through supplying samples for lab-scale testing”. 

The testing will enable accumulation of valuable data for it to analyse and help determine how various types of textile chemicals, like finishing agents and colorants, affect the conversion of cellulose and protein-based materials into nutrients that can be used in the fermentation process, such as sugars and amino acids.

Spiber intends to compile the results from this testing into a database that will indicate the efficiency of different materials in combination with textile chemicals when converted into nutrients for fermentation. This database should serve as a resource for the industry to refer to when designing products for circularity, and products which will be compatible with circularity solutions such as Spiber’s biosphere circulation system in the future.