Mill Memo: Vietnam Producers on Cotton-Free and Circular Denim
Increasingly, mills are thinking beyond virgin cotton for denim. This might mean cottonless denim with materials like TENCEL™ Lyocell or hemp, or a mix of recycled textiles and wood-based fibers. Carved in Blue checked in with the TENCEL™ mill customers to chat about their cotton-free collections and circular fabrics.
Read on to hear from PPJ/Vinatex, TCE, Tuong Long and XDD.
PPJ/VINATEX
Ragunathan Dhamodharan, technical director
Carved in Blue: Do you have a ‘No Cotton Denim’ fabric?
Ragunathan: We do not have No Cotton Denim fabric or Zero Cotton Denim fabric. There is no collection in this concept.
Carved in Blue: For denim fabrics, what are you offering in TENCEL™ Lyocell for volume priced orders? What is your common TENCEL™ Denim base fabric?
Ragunathan: These are the bulk production fabrics with TENCEL™ Lyocell.
These are the dobby fake knit fabrics: 1422E08563V1 and 1625E08623V1.
Here are other TENCEL™ Lyocell developments—mostly we have TENCEL™ Lyocell developments in dobby knit fabric: 1698E08563V1, 1714E08563V1, 1773E08623V1, 1774E08393V1, 1936E08933V1, 1965E08623V1, 1966E08623V1, 1969E08563V1, 1970E08563V1, 1971E08563V1 and 2001R05795R1.
Carved in Blue: Circularity is the next frontier. What have you developed with mechanical recycled cotton and TENCEL™ Lyocell?
Ragunathan: We are working recycled cotton fabric developments.
We have done developments using ECOVERO™ fiber in recycled cotton like post-consumer waste cotton. We can offer both pre- and post-consumer cotton recycled fabrics.
We have done developments using TENCEL™ Lyocell and hemp fibers (ref fabric code 1666E101V4R7). The unique properties give a soft hand with neppy hemp looks.
Carved in Blue: What about chemical recycling with REFIBRA™ technology?
Ragunathan: We have done many developments using REFIBRA™ fiber: cotton/REFIBRA™, cotton/REFIBRA™/spandex, cotton/REFIBRA™/polyester/spandex and cotton/REFIBRA™/polyester/rayon/spandex.
Carved in Blue: Anything else?
Ragunathan: Other fibers like ECOVERO™ are used in our developments with the following compositions: cotton/ECOVERO™/spandex and cotton/recycled cotton/ECOVERO™/T400/spandex.
TCE
Justin Hwang, sales director
Carved in Blue: Do you have a ‘No Cotton Denim’ fabric?
Justin: We developed no cotton denim fabric with Target for its Universal Thread brand four years ago. We called this collection “Cotton Free” or “Cottonless.”
The marketing concept is two points: extreme soft touch and heavy weight but feel light wearing the jeans. The denim is also super soft and has a feather feel.
Carved in Blue: For denim fabrics, what are you offering in TENCEL™ Lyocell for volume priced orders? What is your common TENCEL™ Denim base fabric?
Justin: Our TENCEL™ Lyocell common content is cotton (80-90 percent), TENCEL™ Lyocell (10 percent), polyester (6-7 percent), spandex (2-3 percent).
Carved in Blue: Circularity is the next frontier. What have you developed toward this goal?
Justin: On the cotton side, recycled cotton (20 percent), and on the polyester side, Lycra Ecomade T-400 dualFX.
SP2796SDK S is comprised of TENCEL™ Lyocell (71 percent), polyester (14 percent), Ecomade T-400 (6 percent), rayon (7 percent) and Lycra (2 percent). Before wash weight is 12.3 oz., and after wash weight is 14.2 oz. It has stretch of 41.8 percent and recovery of 92.1 percent. We can adopt ECOVERO™ rayon instead of conventional normal rayon.
Another textile has rayon (40 percent), polyester (21 percent), acrylic (21 percent), cotton (16 percent) and spandex (2 percent). This is digital peached fabric for the winter season. Existing is normal rayon but we can switch to the ECOVERO™.
ECOVERO™ and Repreve super soft fabric, SP3648-2SDK S, has cotton (57 percent), Repreve (22 percent), ECOVERO™ (19 percent) and spandex (2 percent).
TUONG LONG
Vincent Lau, director of sales
Carved in Blue: Do you have a ‘No Cotton Denim’ fabric?
Vincent: At this moment, we don’t have ‘No Cotton Denim’ fabric. We had some 100 percent TENCEL™ shirt-weight denim fabric a long time ago, but there is no more hanger or yardage available now.
Carved in Blue: For denim fabrics, what are you offering in TENCEL™ Lyocell for volume priced orders? What is your common TENCEL™ Denim base fabric?
Vincent: We have some bottom weight running quality of cotton/TENCEL™ Lyocell/polyester/spandex denim.
Carved in Blue: Circularity is the next frontier. What have you developed toward this goal?
Vincent: We can change our cotton/TENCEL™ Lyocell/polyester/spandex quality to recycled cotton depending on the buyer’s request.
We also can change the polyester part to Repreve if the buyer can afford the higher price.
XDD
Man Ng, denim director
Carved in Blue: Do you have a ‘No Cotton Denim’ fabric?
Man: Currently we don’t have ’No Cotton Denim’ in our development.
Carved in Blue: For denim fabrics, what are you offering in TENCEL™ Lyocell for volume priced orders? What is your common TENCEL™ Denim base fabric?
Man: We have developed a few products with REFIBRA™ and ECOVERO™, and also presented these products through previous Kingpins shows (Amsterdam and New York). The feedback is awesome from different customers—for example, Levi’s and Target—they love this sustainable product and requested some sample yardage from us. We are now working close with them for the next step, I believe there will be volume orders from them in the next season.
Carved in Blue: Circularity is the next frontier. What have you developed toward this goal?
Man: We have a brand new eco product development in this year—we named it Ecology Denim. This is a five-in-one concept; our main purpose is to add fiber from Lenzing and recycle waste. This fabric contains 15 percent TENCEL™ x REFIBRA™, 10 percent GRS-certified recycled cotton, 64 percent organic cotton, 1 percent Ciclo bio-based spandex and 10 percent textile waste. According to the textile waste, which is produced from our closed-loop system, we collect the denim waste from local factories, as well as its own cut waste. It then dissolves and regenerates the fiber and re-spins the yarn before moving to the fabric production process. It also recycles cut waste from its own production. Overall, the system regenerates 10 to 15 percent of all waste collected. The key to regenerating the denim is to apply the denim waste to similar products to maintain the quality. This is the different between the others.
