€100m investment from Inditex in ‘textile material of the future’
Fashion group Inditex, the parent company of Zara, has announced that it will spend €100 million over a three-year period on Infinna fibre.
Finnish manufacturer Infinited Fiber Company has developed Infinna, describing it as a fibre of “virgin quality, with the soft and natural look and feel of cotton”. It produces the regenerated fibre from “cotton-rich textile waste” and has explained that, because its fibres derive from cellulose, a building block of all plants, Infinna is biodegradable and contains “no microplastics to clog our seas”. Clothes made from Infinna can be recycled again in the same process, together with other textile waste.
The Spanish group’s €100 million commitment means the Infinited Fiber Company can scale up its recycling technology by bringing its first large-capacity factory into operation in 2024. At that point, Inditex’s purchase of Infinna will begin and will continue for three years. Inditex has said it envisages buying and using 30% of total Infinna production volumes over those three years.
Sustainability director of Inditex, Javier Losada, said on making the announcement: “It is our firm belief that innovation is the key for the fashion industry to have a competitive, circular future. It is for this reason that we are actively searching for new solutions, through new partnerships, processes and materials that will allow us to source new fibres from post- and pre-consumer textile waste.”
Chief executive and co-founder of the Infinited Fiber Company, Petri Alava, said: “This deal is a significant step towards realising our ambition of making Infinna a mainstream textile material of the future.”
Zara has already launched a first capsule collection of clothes made from Infinna. It collected unwanted, used clothes from international aid agency Caritas and sent the garments to the Infinited Fiber Company so that they could be turned into the new fibre.
Image: Inditex
