“It Can’t Be a Lab Product, You Have to Go Huge”

Nature Coatings’ founder CEO, Jane Palmer, tells us how deep the roots really go of her company’s 100% bio-based BioBlack TX black pigment, a one-for-one and price competitive replacement for petroleum-derived carbon black for textiles, made from certified wood waste.

How did you make the journey from Noon Design Studio’s dye recipes, finally achieving black with the help of medieval texts, to Nature Coatings? In other words, what was the key that ultimately unlocked today’s BioBlack TX? 

Noon Design Studio used existing plant and insect-based dyes that have been around for literally thousands of years. [These dyes] are very romantic, I love the story. They were found in Tutankhamun’s tomb, the Mayans were using them, the Navajo… all these ancient cultures were using the exact same dyes and that is of course a very beautiful story. 

But you’re exactly right, there is very little opportunity for a true black with those dyes. I [eventually] found a medieval recipe describing how to get one and I was able to replicate it in the studio. It was immensely labour intensive, but it was beautiful, and we had a lot of orders. But as the business grew, it was basically understood that those types of dyes were not going to be scalable or able to create the impact that I was interested in. The reason why is because they are very expensive. They are definitely a premium product. They also fade really quickly and don’t create a long-lasting colour [after you expose them to] the sun and the wash. They also use a lot of water to apply, as much as twice that used by petroleum-based reactive dyes. I just sort of realised that there was nice interest from brands in this non-petroleum, plant-based solution, but it wasn’t really creating the impact or the scalability I was looking for. I was super fortunate because one of my customers ended up acquiring that business. They still operate the dyehouse and they are doing a great job with it. 

With Nature Coatings, I decided to tackle black because it is the most used colour in textiles, and it is also the hardest to get. I figured if we could crack this nut, then we will really have something. I just started with some basic chemistry and other types of knowledge and tried dozens and dozens of different types of feedstocks. I was looking at food waste and grass and any kind of agricultural or biowaste I could get my hands on. Wood waste really became the winner because it is a clean product. Food waste, by contrast, can be really messy: you have to separate it, it can be hard to get, and it spoils. Grass was similarly not a good input because it wasn’t chemically correct for what we were looking for. 

Wood waste was just kind of very fortuitous. It’s traceable and we could get Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, which we know is super important for brands, especially, so they can have full traceability over the whole supply chain. It is also clean, it doesn’t require pesticides or any kind of harmful inputs, and the waste side is huge. It’s estimated that 55 million tonnes of wood waste are created every year in the US* and right now they’re just burning it and landfilling it, so those were kind of the key factors that really led to something scalable.  

What was it like working with the Levi’s WellThread team? What were their specific “aesthetic and technical needs”, as you have described them previously, and how did you achieve these?

Like any brand, Levi’s has very specific performance and aesthetic requirements, but also chemical requirements. Levi’s, along with, I would say, two or three other brands, are the real leaders in clean chemistry and they use a system called Scivera Lens, which is essentially a huge deep dive into every component of every chemistry they’re using. It is by far the strictest out there. So, we started with that, and I felt really confident that we would pass their requirements, which we did. They then have their own performance requirements, including number of washes, without the fabrics changing colour or fading or anything, which is a real problem with petroleum-based carbon black pigments. Our product is perfect for this as it doesn’t do that. 

WellThread wanted to use BioBlack TX for rotary printing. I went to their factory in Ahmedabad, India, to meet with their teams, both the denim and printing teams, and I was able to proactively participate, which I think is what Levi’s particularly appreciated. It is challenging for any brand to adopt new technology, but the team has since let us know over and over that it was easy to work with us because we were really proactive. 

Tell us about your work with Orta on Bio Awake. This was the first time BioBlack TX had been used to warp dye denim fabrics – what changed and how was the process different? 

Warp dyeing is interesting because Orta was the first to commercialise denims that have been warp dyed using BioBlack TX. We are so excited about this partnership, as it continues to expand and grow, and they seem really invested in working with us. We feel the same way as them, so we are really looking forward to all the different types of development work we can do together. 

I have my own experience with warp dyeing as well, from when I was working with a university in Texas a few years ago. It is very clever. We can essentially replace other indigo dyeing methods, still using the exact same six to eight boxes. We worked on a layering process as well, but using foam instead, so it was pretty much waterless. The boxes were full of foam and the yarns would come in and come out – very similar to indigo, although there is no oxidising process involved. It was this layering build-up, so it was pretty amazing, as I discovered the same equipment could be adapted for use with our product.

It was great that Orta was able to do that with Bio Awake. From the beginning, we engineered things so that would be the case. We wanted to make it as easy to adopt as possible, so we designed BioBlack TX to work with all kinds of equipment, manufacturing, processes and formulations, so it is a real universal colourant across a wide variety of applications. That was critical, because it is hard enough to get somebody interested in trying something new, but if you can just tell them that it’s a one-for-one replacement or a swap out… instead of grabbing this product off the self, grab BioBlack TX, as it is going to work the same, and even with a higher chance of success, which we have found to be true. It’s cool that Orta was able to use its own equipment to warp dye denim fabrics with our product. 

Are you still working with AGI Denim? 

The team at AGI is great. I met them after a presentation I did at Kingpins Amsterdam in 2019. The other presenters had been very technical, which left me feeling like BioBlack TX was a bit lo-fi in comparison, since our delivery was very different. But then AGI came up to me and basically said they really understood what we are doing, unlike some of the other presentations, which made me realise that we have a highly relatable product. It is easy to understand and visualise and the fact that it is simple, easy to digest and understand has been a big part of our success. AGI was one of our first champions in that way. 

How did you develop such an easy-to-understand, one-for-one replacement product?

Well, it was very iterative. It didn’t happen overnight, that is for sure. I have been in the industry of pigments and dyes for textiles for over 20 years, so I have a pretty deep background in all of it, not only on the technical side or the chemistry side, but also on the supply chain side. I understand what the industry needs in terms of adoption, so I knew from the beginning that we really needed a water-based dispersion, which is what we make today. BioBlack TX is essentially a concentrated pigment in a water-based dispersion and the reason why the pigment comes in that form, instead of dry, is because, as you can imagine, it is easier to mix into another formulation. With dry pigments, it gets clumpy, or you might need special mixing blades or something like that, so I knew from the beginning that this would be important.

It all started with the pigment and just really wanting to use waste material. I am a little obsessed with trash – there is just so much of it! I feel so strongly that there is value in waste, and I knew from the beginning that I wanted to make use of it. I also have a philosophy where everything I design, develop or make must be suitable for burial in my vegetable garden, meaning it is super simple, it’s not going to hurt anybody and it’s not going to hurt the planet. We can have the same things in our lives in terms of performance and cost, without destroying the planet or hurting ourselves. Those are sort of my working parameters, knowing what the industry needs. 

Before I even started Nature Coatings, I spoke with 40 experts in the field and asked them what they needed. It was experts like the lead chemist at Nike, the regulation person at Bed Bath & Beyond and many others. I tried to approach it from a very objective standpoint, as in I wasn’t trying to push my own agenda, and ultimately found the exercise to be really, really valuable. They basically said the product must perform the same, it must cost the same, it needs to be a one-for-one swap out or replacement – and the mills are going to be the hardest people to convince, as it’s their risk. You need to ensure that you can de-risk it for them. Then the cherry on top is if you can create a sustainable solution. 

So, I just took all of that to heart and started there. Like I said, it was very iterative. The first product we came up with included our pigment, but its other ingredients were not biobased. I was okay with that, but I wasn’t satisfied. You know, I think that’s kind of the mind of a product developer: there is always somewhere else to go, there is always somewhere else to try. It was years. It was literally years of development work and then finally landing on a product, which we’ve now commercialised as BioBlack TX, that I feel really, really great about, because it is 100% biobased. We just recently had our LCA (life cycle assessment) back from Accend over in Norway and it turns out our dispersion is also carbon negative, not just the BioBlack TX pigment. It just feels good, as it doesn’t feel greenwashed. It is based on facts; we have data to back things up… but getting to this point was definitely not an overnight thing. It took around six years of development. 

How important are trade shows to your business at present? Your participation in Kingpins, for example, seems to have been especially fruitful over the years. 

I think trade shows are always really important. This is something [chief marketing officer Lara Pizzato] and I talk about all the time. Things click when people can see and touch fabrics or garments made with BioBlack TX. So, for us to participate in trade shows is super important, because we can say look at this piece of denim or print, for example, and buyers can touch it, they can visualise the process behind it and how they could use BioBlack TX in their own collections. 

People are very visual and tactile, so I think fairs are super important. Lara, as my Europe-based counterpart, and with so many of the shows being in Europe, will be attending many in the coming weeks and months, including ITMA in Milan and Future Fabrics Expo in London, where Nature Coatings will have a booth.  We also attended ChangeNOW in Paris last month, at the invitation of luxury goods group Kering and industry innovation platform Fashion for Good. 

How complicated is it to convince potential partners (brands, mills and dyehouses, etc) to shift to a new process, generally? 

There are a lot of interesting things happening right now. I had this idea back in 2015, basically, and at that time, to be totally honest, it felt very bleak. There was not a lot of hope that the apparel industry would ever change. Things had been happening the same way for a century. We all knew we were polluting everything, that there were problems, but it just seemed like an insurmountable mountain to climb to create change. Since then, I would say that attitude has changed completely, which is incredible. Now, it is such a hot space, there is so much new innovation and technology. Brands are looking at it, mills are willing to try it. Whether they are looking at it from a marketing perspective or from an actual impact perspective, who knows, but it’s okay because there is change happening, there is adoption happening, and I think that is super exciting. 

Like I was saying before, we spoke to all those experts in the field, and they kept reiterating that if the product is the same cost, provides the same performance and is a one-for-one replacement, that is what is going to get you through the door. And we’ve done that. I think that something really important to mention is that we are now at price parity with many carbon blacks, so BioBlack TX can be cost neutral for a brand to adopt, which is major. Every stakeholder in this industry has different needs and cost is probably 90% for most, so the fact that we can really provide that, with a better product, is huge, I think. 

What are your plans for expansion and what should we expect to see from you next?

We are currently building out and expanding our facility in the US state of Georgia so that we will be able to produce approximately 70 tonnes of BioBlack TX a month. That should be up and running in roughly six to eight weeks, so it is super exciting. That is the other thing I have known from the beginning with this business: it can’t be a lab product, you kind of have to go huge, because that is how you get the price right and you make it work. 

The new facility will increase our capacity significantly, but we also have new products coming down the pike, which I can’t really get into right now, but we are really excited about those, too. In terms of our bigger strategic plan, our goal is to set up a network of micro-factories in key international locations as we continue to grow, to enable us to produce closer to where our products are being used, wherever that may be. The nice thing about the FSC certification programme is that it is global, so we can source wood waste from forests in India, Poland, Brazil or anywhere and still be able to demonstrate full traceability. Paper is also made around the world, obviously, and we use that waste as well. And then there is lumber, pencils, furniture and everything like that, so our feedstock is in abundance. 

It is a good business decision, because you can get product to your customer base faster and more efficiently. And it is of course a good decision for the planet, too, since it likewise lowers our transportation footprint. 

*Based on calculations for the year 2020 by Jahan, Zhang, Bhuiyan & Navaratnam, 2022. 

Originally posted on InsideDenim. Find the article here