Nike partners with Dutch firm on waterless fabric dyeing

Nike Inc. on Tuesday said it has formed a partnership with a Dutch company that has developed a way to dye textiles without using water.

Netherlands-based DyeCoo Textile Systems Inc. has developed what the Washington County sporting goods giant (NYSE: NKE) calls the world’s first commercially available waterless textile dyeing machines.

Traditional dyeing techniques can use around 40 gallons of water to dye just two pounds of textile materials, and as much as 39 million tons of polyester is projected to be dyed annually by 2015.

DyeCoo, though, employs a process that uses fluid carbon dioxide to dye fabric.

“There is no water consumption, a reduction in energy use, no auxiliary chemicals required, no need for drying, and the process is twice as fast,” DyeCoo CEO Reinier Mommall said in a news release. “The technology can also improve the quality of the dyed fabric, allows for greater control over the dyeing process, enables new dye capabilities and transforms fabric dyeing so that it can take place just about anywhere. We hope more industry leaders will join us in leveraging this innovative technology in the near future.”

And that’s Nike’s plan.

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, and Nike declined to say whether it made a direct investment in DyeCoo.

The intent of the partnership is to use Nike as a global stage on which to show off the technology. Nike hopes to showcase textiles dyed using the DyeCoo technology at events later this year. Spokeswoman Mary Remuzzi said those events haven’t yet been determined, but the company hopes to have something that could be showcased during this summer’s Olympic games in London.

The DyeCoo process thus far has been applied commercially to polyester, though Nike said research is underway to apply it to other natural and synthetic fibers.

Though the carbon dioxide process has been used at scale in other industries — such as the decaffeination of coffee and the extraction of natural flavors — Nike’s intent is to help DyeCoo scale it for use in apparel manufacturing with an eye toward making it the industry's new standard.

Mommall said via e-mail Tuesday that his company has one machine running in Thailand and is now installing a new machine with three high-pressure chambers. Its plan is to conduct a "controlled roll-out" of the technology this year and next year.

“We believe this technology has the potential to revolutionize textile manufacturing, and we want to collaborate with progressive dye houses, textile manufacturers and consumer apparel brands to scale this technology and push it throughout the industry,” Eric Sprunk, Nike’s vice president of merchandising and product, said in a news release.

The textile dyeing process was at the center of a probe last summer led by international environmental activist group Greenpeace International, which in July issued a report linking Nike, Adidas AG and other apparel brands to Chinese textile plants accused of discharging hazardous chemicals from dyeing into public water ways.

Though Nike at the time said it never used the plants in question for the so-called “wet processes” that resulted in the discharge, it later heeded Greenpeace’s call to action by pledging to eliminate the discharge of hazardous chemicals from its supply chain by 2020.

Remuzzi said the partnership from DyeCoo isn’t related to the Greenpeace action. Nike, she said, has been exploring the DyeCoo technology for the past eight years.

The deal marks the first of what could be several partnerships produced by the company’s still-evolving Sustainable Business & Innovation Lab.

Though Nike hasn’t said much about the lab publicly it has been described as a venture capital arm of the company focused on scouting and nurturing sustainable technologies and innovations. Among its personnel are seasoned corporate venture capitalists, such as John Hull, a former director of Intel Capital’s Communications Fund.

“We’re going to continue to look for innovative companies that share our interest and vision,” Remuzzi said. “You’ll probably see more stories like this.”