Kontoor Brands is expanding its collaboration with a Texas-based biotech company to create a sustainable source of hemp-based fabric.
The Greensboro-based maker and seller of Wrangler and Lee brand products has announced it is growing its partnership with Panda Biotech, an emerging leader in the industrial hemp fiber industry based in Dallas.
The companies are working to bring traceability and scale to the textile-grade cottonized hemp grown and processed in the United States.
“Sustainable hemp creates the perfect complement fiber to cotton. We are excited by the opportunity to advance the denim industry’s use of environmentally friendly hemp to craft high-quality, eco-conscious apparel,” said Dhruv Agarwal, Kontoor Brands’ senior director of global material innovation and product development. “Our work with Panda Biotech has been focused on making truly sustainable hemp, unlocking an additional commercialized fiber crop for American farmers, and providing consumers with access to more sustainable apparel.”
As Kontoor and Panda Biotech work toward the commercialization of domestically grown and processed hemp, the companies are focused on traceability from farm to product. Industrial hemp is a regenerative crop because of its ability to grow with little water, minimal to no pesticides and herbicides, production of a high per-acre fiber yield, and absorption of more carbon dioxide per acre than any forest or commercial crop.
“Kontoor Brands has been an invaluable ally as we build the largest industrial hemp processing facility in the United States for high-quality, textile-grade fiber and hurd for numerous sustainable manufacturing applications,” said Dixie Carter, president of Panda Biotech. “We have been working with Kontoor since our company was founded, and we are aligned in our desire for our domestically grown fiber to be the most traceable hemp in the world and processed using renewable practices.”
Kontoor has previously announced the expansion of its Indigood program, an initiative that targets water savings during the fabric construction phase of the apparel supply chain. Debuted in 2019 with the introduction of foam-dyed denim, the Indigood program has expanded to include water savings technology in apparel fabric production that uses at least 90% less water than conventional fabric production.
Through the Panda Biotech collaboration, which first kicked off in 2019, Kontoor Brands plans to have U.S. grown and processed hemp in market in its denim apparel by 2023.
A privately held company, is a first mover in the emerging U.S. industrial hemp fiber and hurd industry. Panda Biotech’s executive leadership has extensive experience developing, financing, constructing, and operating large-scale infrastructure facilities in clean energy. The company is developing its first large-scale, industrial hemp gin facility in Wichita Falls, Texas. Scheduled to be operational in March 2022, it will be the largest hemp processing and cottonization facility in the Western Hemisphere and believed to be the largest in the world.
