Interview

Textile Exchange (TE) has accepted the official ISO 15115 definition of leather, and manufacturers, brands and retailers must make it incumbent on themselves to educate consumers the difference between genuine leather and faux leather, PU leather, mushroom leather, pineapple leather, or any other plant-based leather which cannot be categorised as 'leather'. So, what does industry think?

Natural Fiber Welding— the name says much about NFW’s vision for a world that will be material-rich and plastic-free. The people behind it claim to be “obsessed with leaving the world better than we found it” and so they are on a mission to invent and “manufacture shockingly sustainable materials” from plants. The CEO & Founder of NFW Luke Haverhals tells texfash.com how he is leading his company “a moonshot systems-level shift away” from petroleum-derived products and toxic chemistries.

When cutting-edge technology is applied to fruit waste it creates an all-new world of revolutionary, premium biomaterials — where performance meets possibility. The technology, modelled on nature’s own design, aims for an animal-free, more sustainable future — one cell at a time. And doing this is Mexico-headquartered Polybion as it moves from linear to circular, leftover to constructive, and from leather to Celium. texfash.com talks to Gabriela Irastorza Dragonné, the Head of Communications and Culture at Polybion to know more.The first part of an interview.

The Taiwanese leather sector dates back to more than 70 years and it was in the 1990s that the tanneries began to relocate and set up factories in Thailand, Vietnam, Mainland China and other Southeast Asian countries. Today it produces about 45-60 million square feet of leather per month, exporting almost 98% to some of the best-known footwear makers. Thomas CJ Yu, President of the Taiwanese International Leather Association (TILA) in conversation with texfash.com.

Brexit in the UK has caused major issues with sourcing labour, added regulatory and import/export burdens, increased input costs and reduced customer confidence. Dr Kerry Senior, Director, Leather UK, a membership-based trade organisation with the remit to represent, promote and protect the leather industry, elaborates.

The mission of the Sustainable Leather Foundation (SLF) is to support the global leather industry to learn, to improve and to protect the planet for future generations. Towards this objective its latest offering is the Partner Profiles and QR Codes which link up the SLF and a company’s website, and the company’s Transparency Dashboard. In a brief conversation with texfash.com, Deborah Taylor, Managing Director at SLF elaborates on the initiatives.

Vegan, completely biodegradable and produced with bio-fabrication, AMSilk’s products are environment friendly and make a significant contribution to a future zero-waste society. Ulrich Scherbel, Managing Director at AMSilk, the world’s leading supplier of innovative high-performance biotech materials, talks to texfash.com about how he aims to make smart performing biotech materials part of everyday life.

Here’s how and why Basel-based VYN claims to be the first sneaker brand to stand for responsible materials and manufacturing, eco-innovation (designed for self-repair), care services, and at the end of life, responsible disassembly and re-use of materials and resources, thereby creating a circular system.

Traceability solution provider Haelixa promises to bridge current traceability gaps by physically marking raw materials and identifying them at any supply chain step, proving claims of product origin, recycling, manufacturing and quality. Chief Executive Officer Michela Puddu elaborates in this texfash.com Special.

Digital technology is key to unleashing creativity, answering the call for more sustainability, more precisely and cost-effectively answering consumer demands, and providing the process digitisation necessary to make onshoring/nearshoring profitable and eliminate unnecessary supply chain complexity and risk, says Ronen Samuel, the Chief Executive Officer at Kornit Digital. A texfash.com Special.