Apparel brand Cone Denim will present its first denim fabrics made with Circulose at this week’s Kingpins event in New York. The launch follows Cone’s decision to become the first North American denim mill to join the Swedish textile-to-textile recycling innovator Renewcell’s Circulose Supplier Network (CSN) of yarn and textile producers.
Renewcell set up the CSN in 2023 to ensure a secure supply of products made using its Circulose dissolving pulp, which is made from cotton and other cellulosic textile waste such as worn-out jeans and production scraps, to the fashion industry.
Renewcell uses a patented process to breakdown and recycle textile waste to create a biodegradable raw material that can be used to create viscose, lyocell, modal, acetate and other man-made cellulosic fibres.
Pierette Scavuzzo, Director of product design for Cone Denim said the new styles underscored the company’s ongoing commitment to driving change toward a sustainable future in denim manufacturing. “In creating these products, we’ve challenged ourselves as denim producers to develop fabrics that promote circularity in fashion with increased percentages of circular and recycled raw materials,” she said. “It was also essential in our design goals that these fabrics have extensive reach within a brand’s denim program to promote the scaling of this circular yarn innovation.”
The first new style, Wonderwall, is a mid-weight, rigid fabric containing a blend of Recycled Claim Standard (RCS) certified pre-consumer recycled cotton, Tencel, and 29% regenerated viscose made with Circulose.
The second, Eden, is Cone Denim’s complementary product to Wonderwall made with 31% regenerated viscose made with Circulose.
The new collection launch will come as a welcome boost to Renewcell which this month said it was cutting its workforce by a quarter – reducing operating costs by SEK 35 million (£3.4m) a year – in a bid to boost sales of Circulose pulp.
Renewcell, which opened the world’s first scale textile-to-textile recycling plant a year ago, has hit financial difficulties after failing to ramp up sales of Circulose as quickly as anticipated.
On a brighter note, the company sold about 1,000 metric tonnes during December – a significant improvement on the previous month when sales dropped to zero.
