The necessities of textile finishing, imparting specific effects on the final garments, are currently achieved through practices considered as borderline, in terms of the environmental sustainability and for the health and safety of the operators. In many case, the chemicals employed are banned or phased out by the environmental regulations and REACH restrictions. So far, the availability of cheap reactants (based on noxious permanganate or chlorine chemicals) has been driving the choice of processes for the aesthetics, wearability and hand in the fashion wear, as well as for the fast processing capacity.
The big names of fashion industry are now leading the development of a greener chemistry in textiles finishing, not compromising on the final image effects, and the ever evolving fashion collections. The optimal solution would rely on a high quality finished garment, processed in a highly automated way, with a strongly reduced use of energy and water, and a marginal application of chemicals, none of which considered as a dangerous or banned from the regulations. The idea underlying the SPIRYT project is to develop a suite of processing which can overcome the current limitations and at the same time grant the possibility to achieve the final effects on textile or garments, with a comparable operation time and a much lesser environmental footprint.
The commitment of NEARCHIMICA is to apply the knowledge gathered in more than 35 years operation in the development of fine chemicals for the textile finishing, developing recipes and formulations that can be the unique selling point for own customers. The end users addressed are the big names in the fashion industry, willing to remain at the edge of the fashion products, but with a strong green communication capacity, to be used not only as leverage to attract customers, but also in the respect of the stricter rules and standards. The core of the SPIRYT projects aims at combining in innovative way laser, ozone, chemical, resins and enzymes processing, mixed in a appropriate way to target the required, specific final effects on garments.
