Water
60% of Coats total water consumption is used in dyeing, one of the most important parts of the thread manufacturing process. Coats is investing in new machines with low liquor ratio. It is also exploring innovative developments in digital printing technology and the waterless dyeing opportunity that offers.
Leader's Voice
“Water is a precious resource
and existential to our business.
Without it we cannot make
the threads our customers
want. We are fortunate that
in many parts of the world
where we operate water is
plentiful today, but in others
it is not. And we know that
changes in our climate may
impact the availability of water
that we, and the communities
around us, need. Furthermore,
water is a cost and so it is in
our commercial interests to
use this resource as sparingly
as possible.
We will invest in new technology and ways to improve the efficiency of our processes, as well as implementing robust programs of management and maintenance to make sure we are not wasteful. Our businesses are targeted to use less, and this is an important priority for Coats as we strive to make more thread, using less water.”
Michael Schofer
Chief Supply Chain Officer
Using less water for a brighter future
Coats prides itself on the ability to provide high quality threads that meet the specific needs of customers. This includes the color. As anyone working in the textile industry knows, color plays a crucial role in a product’s success. From designer clothing to home furnishings to automotive, the latest trends can be defined as much by color as by brand or product material. In 2018, we dyed over 174,000 different colors in nearly four million production batches.
Dyeing is one of the most important
parts of the manufacturing process as
we transform processed polyester, cotton
and other materials from a functional
material into one that enhances and
completes our customer’s final product.
This process alone accounts for around
60% of our total water consumption.
Coats has long been a leader in dyeing technology in the textile industry, constantly driving innovation to improve quality and efficiency, including, recently, through the introduction of low liquor ratio dyeing machines at some sites. Traditionally dyeing uses around 40-80 liters of water per kilo of product, resulting in the use of huge volumes of water. Our new machines have reduced this ratio to around 20-40 liters per kilo – up to a 50% reduction in water usage.
We are seeking to improve this even further, embracing developments in digital technology to enable our processes to be more specific and tailored to our customer’s needs in the future, in a sustainable manner. By using digital printing technology, we aspire to be able to produce exact lengths and colors of thread, whenever or wherever they are needed. The Twine technology, in which we recently invested $5 million, is based on waterless dyeing and will feature inbuilt color software integrated with Coats ColourStitch.
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