Levi’s helps Stony Creek scale up natural indigo
15/12/2021
In March, Stony Creek was selected among 14 start-ups to receive help from brands and manufacturers to scale to their technologies.
Levi’s is now piloting Stony Creek’s IndiGold, a plant-based pre-reduced indigo, at scale.
For the first time, Stony Creek Colors will provide its pre-reduced IndiGold indigo dye to select denim mills to run performance trials with different denim dyeing systems, with the goal of unlocking key learnings around shade application and other efficiencies. The project aims to have garments dyed with Stony Creek Colors’ IndiGold dye on the market by late 2022.
Jeffrey Hogue, chief sustainability officer at Levi Strauss & Co, which has collaborated with Stony Creek Colors for multiple seasons on its Wellthread line, said: “Our previous work with Stony Creek has shown the great potential of plant-based dyes.
“This is a great opportunity to expand that work and more fully realise the potential of this innovation.”
IndiGold can be integrated into an indigo pre-reduction system by using hydrogen as the reduction agent, eliminating harmful byproducts from both the pre-reduction and the dyeing process. In November, the US company raised more than $40,000 in a Kickstarter campaign - 256% of its original funding goal – to help launch the pre-reduced indigo, which makes dyeing results more consistent.
Stony Creek Colors grows its indigo on partner farms in the US, helping farmers shift their operations to a new, soil-enriching crop. Through its work on plant genetics and breeding, it is also investigating other potential agricultural benefits of the crop.Fashion for Good, which has an equity stake in Stony Creek Colors, will oversee the project. Katrin Ley, managing director of Fashion for Good, said: “The textile industry must move towards safer, renewable and regenerative inputs. Stony Creek Color’s innovation is driving this change and we are excited to be working closely with them and our partners to bring this to market.”
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