A project backed by the European Regional Development Fund has created a new line of colourful dyes from compounds extracted from mushrooms and plants. The Picasso project’s breakthrough could see these eco-friendly, sustainable products replace some of the synthetic dyes the textile and fashion industries currently use.
Project in northern Portugal makes eco-friendly dyes for the textile, fashion industries
- 24 June 2019
“Sustainability is one of the pillars on which Tintex is based and, in this sense, the search for more sustainable dyeing processes is part of the genesis of our company. We consider that the development and industrial implementation of natural dyeing is of great importance for the future of dyeing processes.”
Picasso brought together a consortium of experts from the textile industry, horticulture sector and industrial research. The goal was to develop natural base compounds with the right colouring and antimicrobial potential that could meet the textile industry’s demand for products that have a reduced impact on human health and the environment.
Varied palette
The project has achieved a number of significant breakthroughs in its quest for a more natural textile dye. A set of compounds has been successfully developed from plants and mushrooms, based on an eco-friendly and sustainable extraction process. The project team achieved ‘bio-colourisation’ of the textile substrates using the extracted compounds and managed to validate their colour and antimicrobial properties. The bio-colourisation process has been successfully tested at the laboratory, pilot and industrial scale. The project’s advances have allowed for the production of a varied palette of colours using a sustainable method.
Increasing turnover
Using these results, the company Tintex Textiles SA is now developing a practical industrial process for natural dyeing which provides colour reproduction and light fastness values that are in line with synthetic dyes currently available on the market. Successful commercial production of the Picasso dyes are expected to generate a 10 % increase in turnover for the company. The new line of dyes will appeal to textile and fashion industry players that are trying develop more ethical, eco-friendly product lines.
Tintex Textiles was joined in the project by ERVITAL which supplied the plants, and mushroom producer BIOINVITRO. Industrial research teams at the Centre of Nanotechnology and Smart Materials and the Technological Centre for Textile and Clothing of Portugal were the driving forces behind Picasso’s research and development tasks.
Total investment and EU funding
Total investment for the project “PICASSO – Innovative Processes and Ingredients for Color Generation - Natural and Sustainable Textiles” is EUR 816 225, with the EU’s European Regional Development Fund contributing EUR 590 816 through the “Competitiveness and Internationalisation” Operational Programme for the 2014-2020 programming period. The investment falls under the priority “SMEs Competitiveness”.