UK-based Colorifix aims to bring environmentally friendly fabric-dyeing solution to China and Southeast Asia in 2025
- Biotech start-up will focus on markets in India and Sri Lanka next year, before making its move to China and Southeast Asia
- Production life-cycle using its solution can help reduce carbon emission by 31 per cent, water consumption by 77 per cent and chemical usage by 80 per cent
Colorifix, a finalist for Prince William’s Earthshot prize, aims to bring its environmentally friendly fabric-dyeing solution to markets in China and Southeast Asia in 2025 to help tackle pollution in the garment manufacturing industry.
The biotech start-up uses DNA sequences from nature and microorganisms to create pigments that can be fixed onto fabrics in a way that significantly reduces water and chemical usage, as well as the carbon footprint in the dyeing process.
The UK firm will make its foray into the Asian markets from the first half of next year, starting with India, the world’s fifth-largest producer of textiles, and Sri Lanka, according to its chief operating officer Christopher Hunter. The firm is still in “very early stages” of establishing its presence in China, he added.
“China is a very important market for textiles,” Hunter said in a video interview on Tuesday. “We are aware that there are increasing environmental targets for the industry in China, which might in some way accelerate our entry. It won’t be before 2025.”
China produced around 22 million tonnes of textile waste in 2020, and had a recycling rate of around 20 per cent, according to the National Development and Reform Commission. The nation produced 1.5 million tonnes of recycled fibre from textile waste that year.
Colorifix, based in Norwich, was founded by synthetic biologists Orr Yarkoni and Jim Ajioka in 2016. They were inspired by their study in rural Nepal on the contamination of drinking water linked to the textile dyeing industry. It was a 2023 Earthshot Prize finalist in the “build a waste-free world” category.
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Colorifix first identifies a colour created naturally by an animal, plant or microbe, before pinpointing the exact genes that lead to the production of the pigment. The company then translates the DNA code into its engineered microorganism, allowing the pigments to be created just as they are in nature.
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A December analysis showed the production life-cycle using its solution can reduce carbon dioxide equivalents by 31 per cent, compared to conventional dyeing. It can also reduce water consumption by 77 per cent and chemical usage by 80 per cent.
Colorifix has developed hundreds of colours, with 14 available for use on customer sites. Fashion brands such as H&M, Pangaia and Vollebak have launched garments dyed with Colorifix’s technology, he added.
“Colorifix’s technology is about borrowing true colours from nature and using them,” Hunter said, adding that the firm can also mix colours to create a whole gamut of new colours. “We are at the very beginning of that, and we are going to start to release products that way from next year.”
Colorifix has raised US$30 million in funding and several million in grants, and is likely to raise its next round of funding in the second quarter of next year, Hunter said.
“We want to establish ourselves as a standard for environmentally friendly dyeing in the industry,” he said. “Ultimately, the vision is to become the [global] standard for dyeing, and we know that that is going to take a lot of time and a lot of partnership, [as well as] buy-in from the industry.”
