At a time when every brand is looking to be more sustainable, Thailand’s green textile sector is seeing a surge of interest from buyers and a resurgence in investment and innovation from its mills and manufacturers.
“We are not the biggest dyeing factory in Thailand, in fact we are medium size with a monthly capacity of only 400 tons. However our medium size enables us to be very agile, which in turn gives us unique advantages over other dyeing factories,” said Chet Vongsuraphichet.
Instead of trying to expand their capacity, Thong Thai Textile is focusing on making their processes more lean and sustainable. The company specializes in knit garments including jersey knits, cotton pique and interlock. In addition to its dyeing facilities, it operates three garment factories in Thailand and one in Myanmar.
“We’re a lean factory so we want to use just enough inputs for the production. This way we can reduce waste and have less CO2 and less water consumption per kilogram of fabric we produce.”
To achieve this, Thong Thai Textile has been investing in new machines that operate more sustainably.
Investing in Green Technology
“We are in the middle of installing four more new jet dyeing machines where the liquor ratio is one-to-two. That means we only need one part water. We installed the first machine in February and it is running quite well. According to the machine’s supplier, this is the first one-to-two ratio machine in Asia.
“These machines have multiple benefits. These low liquor machines give us a better hand feel and it gives us better specification control. They also lower CO2 and reduce water consumption during the process by more than 60 percent,” said Mr. Vongsuraphichet.
The company’s investment in sustainability doesn’t stop there. They recently purchased a new biomass boiler. By moving away from fossil fuels, Thong Thai Textile has been able to save around three kilos of CO2 per kilogram of fabric. Because biomass is a carbon neutral resource, the net CO2 from running the boiler will be zero.
“We’ve introduced a new service called ‘vertical path’ where we can handle the logistics, the costing, as well as the manufacturing for brands. ”
Sustainability Starts with the Materials
In addition to its investment in more sustainable machines, Thong Thai Textile uses U.S. cotton for its cotton and cotton-rich products. “Just by saying the name COTTON USA™ people understand the quality of this cotton because of the standards and regulations it has. Also all the quality control and especially the transparency and what I call fair trade. They have done a great with this in their supply chain,” said Mr. Vongsuraphichet. “For the same reason we recently joined the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol®. With this certification we can proudly say that we are confident that they are doing something the way it should be done.
“Anyone can tell the customer that they are this or that to be more sustainable. But only a very few have a reliable system where they can actually check the transparency of the supply chain.”
A New Vertical Service
“We are doing something that we call ‘vertical path’ where we can handle the dyeing and garment making. We can do the logistics internally, we can do the costing with our garment team internally, and so brands will need fewer people on the purchasing side. Instead, we can do all of this work for them.
“We have just tried this with two of our biggest customers and the feedback was very good,” said Mr. Vongsuraphichet.
Looking ahead, Thong Thai Textiles plans to continue to pilot ways to enhance its manufacturing capabilities with innovative systems that help customers to save time and money.
Email. chet.v@thongthaitextile.com | website. www.thongthaitextile.com | Tel. +66- 02-431-0050
Certified Sustainable
The Trust Protocol is aligned with existing sustainability programs including the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. It brings quantifiable and verifiable goals and measurement to sustainable cotton production, and drives continuous improvement in six key sustainability metrics – land use, soil carbon, water management, soil loss, greenhouse gas emissions, and energy efficiency. The Trust Protocol is designed from the ground up to address the unique regulatory and larger farm growing environment in the United States.
How the Trust Protocol Works
The Protocol Consumption Management Solution (PCMS) starts at the gin when the participating producer’s cotton is ginned and each unique Permanent Bale Identification number (PBI) is attached. At this point we know the exact gin weight and can create an exact amount of Protocol Cotton Consumption Units, where one Protocol Cotton Consumption Unit is created for each kilogram of Protocol Verified Cotton. This important step provides absolute authentication of U.S. cotton origin, verifying against the USDA database.
Supply Chain Transparency
The PCMS harnesses blockchain technology through a powerful combination of the Trust Protocol platform and TextileGenesis™ system to deliver full supply chain transparency by recording and verifying the movement of U.S. cotton along the entire supply chain. This creates article-specific transparency for finished products that was not previously accessible to brands and retailers.
Trusted Third Party Certification
The Trust Protocol incorporates a comprehensive program of verification against Trust Protocol benchmarks, in the form of both second-party and independent third-party audits of grower performance through Control Union Certifications—the latter through allocated on-site visits.
Control Union Certifications has certified over 150 industry standards programs worldwide, including working as a key partner in the early development and piloting phases of Impact Claim Verification Protocol.
Learn More https://trustuscotton.org
The COTTON USA Advantage
- Family growers who are committed to working their fields sustainably and leaving them better for future generations.
- A long history of innovative harvesting and ginning technologies resulting in higher-quality cotton.
- One of the highest rates of adoption in the world for Precision Agriculture, which minimizes water and pesticide usage.
- U.S. farmers operate under voluminous, stringent, and enforceable regulations.
- A commitment to transparent partnership that is unmatched anywhere.
- One of the most comprehensive systems for monitoring and measuring all the key metrics involved in sustainability.
U.S. Cotton Facts
- 2/3 of U.S. cotton land uses only rain water
- U.S. cotton water use efficiency has improved by 79% over the past 35 years
- Cotton is carbon footprint neutral, meaning the plants remove more greenhouse gasses than production produces.
Sustainability Goals
The U.S. cotton industry is building upon the strong environmental gains already achieved over the past 35 years. The aim is to help members meet their current needs while making the world a better place for future generations.
Specific goals include:
- Reducing by 13 percent the amount of land needed to produce a pound of cotton fiber
- Reducing soil loss by 50 percent, in balance with new soil formation
- Increasing water use efficiency (more fiber per gallon) by 18 percent
- Reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 39 percent
- Increasing soil carbon in fields by 30 percent
- Reducing energy to produce seed cotton and ginned lint by 15 percent
Learn More www.cotton.org
