How Soorty Puts Sustainable Innovation into Practice
For Pakistan-based denim manufacturer Soorty, sustainability and circularity are at the heart of its operations. This focus cuts across all areas of its vertical operations, including spinning, weaving, garment production and finishing.
Soorty leverages technologies and innovations from companies such as Tonello, Monforts, Archroma and Jeanologia to create lower impact denim. At a material level, the manufacturer is also using TENCEL™ fibers to achieve trendy looks with lesser environmental cost.
Over its more than four decades, Soorty has expanded its operations. Today, it has the capacity to produce 10.6 million pounds per month, 9 million yards of denim fabric per month, 5 million denim garments each month, and its laundry can process 5 million articles monthly. Some of its specialties include high-fashion washes and a wide range of color offerings.
Noman Nadir, vice president of research and product development, denim at Soorty, spoke with Carved in Blue about Soorty’s sustainability vision, how it is incorporating TENCEL™ fibers into its textiles and its yarn washing innovation.
Carved in Blue: Today, Soorty is a vertically integrated denim manufacturer, but it wasn’t always. How have you grown over the years, and what guided this expansion strategy?
Noman: We started in 1975 as a garment manufacturer, and since then we have continued to grow, creating fabric mills, washing mills and spinning mills in Korangi, Landhi and Nooriabad. We have our in-house cotton recycling plant with more than 1 million pounds per month, and we also have our state-of-the-art industrial sewing thread plant with 180,000 kilograms per month.
Soorty aims to provide solutions encompassing innovation, sustainability, transparency and circularity to our valued customers by being compatible, responsive and agile. We also have our global footprints, which include innovation and fashion hubs in Bangladesh, Turkey, The Netherlands and USA.
As a vertical denim manufacturer, we continue to develop and inspire our customers. Every day, we remind ourselves of our ongoing goals and our continued commitment to improvement. Sustainability and circularity are deep rooted in our thinking; that helps us to best align our product, design and social values with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in order to revamp the industry.
Carved in Blue: Soorty recently launched a collection with TENCEL™ Modal with Indigo Color technology fibers. What is the concept of this line, and how are you using the spun-dyed fibers to achieve different looks and styles?
Noman: The concept behind this was sustainability and having denim jeans that would have a low carbon footprint. Connecting nature, heritage and culture to purely realize mindful fashion and consciousness in a new essence of improved self care, while staying loyal to authentic denim looks.
Instead of dyeing the yarns and abolishing the resource heavy process, we are using spun-dyed TENCEL™ Modal with Indigo Color technology that not only has amazing values of water and energy savings, but also has the added property of rubbing fastness, since the indigo hue is locked within the fibers.
In an aim to have sustainability and a low carbon impact of the denim, we have used indigo modal with different fiber blends using our most eco-consicious sustainable finishing in order to create a green denim that doesnt just look good, but feels good as well. We are creating denim jeans by using our zero stone concept and also keeping the wash downs as sustainable as possible.
Carved in Blue: How else is Soorty using TENCEL™ and REFIBRA™ in its product development? What main benefits have you seen from working with these materials?
Noman: Our diverse and advanced R&D in denim fiber and processing allows us to be in the forefront by mixing sustainability with the latest fashion and styles. We have fabrics that range from 7 oz. to 15 oz. with classical shades of indigo and having bright wash downs.
Using REFIBRA™ and TENCEL™ in our product line has been very innovative for us. We are able to align our products with our company’s aim for producing circular products and being the most sustainable denim manufacturer.
Further, use of indigo and REFIBRA™ in our product line has provided inherited softness, shine, luster and drape that gives the denim fabric a premium feel.
Carved in Blue: You recently debuted Cascara, which is a process that saves water in yarn washing. Could you share a bit about how this innovation works, and its sustainable impact?
Noman: Cascara is our special process that minimizes our dependency on natural and limited resources, lowering our impact and keeping things clean. This revolutionary method not only reduces the amount of water used, but also the load on our effluent treatment while still providing the true denim aesthetics. It does so by not having pre- and post-washes on rope dyeing, hence there is zero waste of water. It also does not need any caustic soda for pre-treatment. The chemicals that are used in the process are green chemicals that are in compliance with REACH, Oeko Tex, ZDHC and Bluesign.
Our main aim was to provide a solution and change the denim industry, saving gallons of water in a day. By doing conscious R&D, we came up with the solution and so launched this special process. It has the green impact as it saves thousands of gallons of water per day, and it improves the wastewater quality. In washing, the laser performance of these fabrics has good scores. Fabric performance is boosted as there are no pumice stones used as well. These characteristics ultimately have cleaner wastage of water, hence the overall process has much lower COD (chemical oxygen demand) and BOD (biochemical oxygen demand). We have so far made shades in indigo and black, both having significant savings.
Carved in Blue: What denim styles are currently resonating with your buyers?
Noman: We are doing different denim styles that are resonating with buyers’ trends and taste. From mom jeans to cargo skinny, you name it and we will have it.
Carved in Blue: Looking ahead at 2023, what is in the pipeline for Soorty?
Noman: We have versatile projects that aim to bring more sustainability and innovation in our company’s profile. We are working in fibers, processes and styles which inculcate in product innovation, some new processes, and machineries and washing innovations. We have our new social projects that will do for society at large. For the betterment of the environment, we are aiming to reduce the GHG emissions with the latest techniques and technological advancement.