Archroma, a global provider of specialty chemicals for sustainable solutions, introduces its first ready-to-use swatch book devoted to developing sustainable black and dark color essentials for faster time to market, to complement its successful DEEP DIVE 2.0 methodology.

In 2018, Archroma announced its system solutions, a comprehensive strategy aimed at meeting the public's increased expectations in terms of consumer and environmental safety.

The Archroma systems are meant to produce innovation and performance while decreasing the impacts on water, energy, and other natural resources under the banner of "The Archroma Way to a Sustainable World: Safe, efficient, improved, it's our nature."

Archroma's patented ONE WAY Impact Calculator, a ground-breaking tool developed in 2012 and regularly improved to model and optimize the footprint of textile application processes, demonstrates the savings produced by these 70+ system solutions.

One of these technologies, DEEP DIVE 2.0, has piqued the interest of big brands and merchants globally, as well as textile producers.

This popular system combines Drimaren® Ultimate HD reactive dyes with Blue Magic, an all-in-one pretreatment, Optifix® RUB New liq and Siligen® SIH-S New liq, a finishing treatment that improves rub fastness and exquisite hand feel, and Cyclanon® XC-W New liq, an effective hydrolyzed dye remover.

As a consequence, businesses committed to driving more sustainable production benefit from a quicker dying process that combines right-first-time productivity, increased fabric quality for longer-lasting end-articles, and drastically decreased water and energy use. Water and energy savings of up to 31% are possible.

The technique is most suited for medium and dark cotton with high light fastness, multiple home washes, and saliva — in other words, clothing used for fashion, sports, and babywear.

At the same time, prospective manufacturers and brands faced the fashion industry's ongoing challenge: time to market.

Designers frequently choose colors that cannot be satisfied in reality on different fibers or manufacturing routes in terms of color flare, metamerism, brightness, depth, and currently sustainable parameters — resulting in significant delays and sacrifices in function, performance, and/or color.

Archroma decided to develop a specific solution to handle these concerns. The firm created a new, one-of-a-kind book with color samples created using the technology that is suitable for rapid manufacturing due to designed color standards and requirements.

This new tool provides a path to bridge the gap between "art and science" by providing fully executable deep colors for cotton with controlled color metamerism during the inspiration phase, while also demonstrating water, energy, and chemical savings, enhanced colorfastness using safe chemistry for the end-user.

Medium to dark colors is a common wardrobe staple among customers. As a result, most manufacturers and stores have and sell up to 60% of their seasonal palettes in medium to dark tones. Dark tones also consume the most water and energy in manufacturing, thus selecting these colors would have the largest ecological positive impact.

The 48 colors swatched in the DEEP DIVE 2.0 book were chosen based on market appeal in order to help brands and manufacturers to meet that highly steady market demand. Customers can utilize these colors as they are, or as inspiration for new bespoke colors that Archroma can produce and match utilizing the DEEP DIVE 2.0 technology.

Christophe Maestripieri, Global head of the Archroma Brand Studio, the company’s department dedicated to supporting brands’ projects and innovations, said that they wanted to make sure their partners have all the tools they need to transition to more sustainable colors. They have the appropriate dying system for the job, DEEP DIVE 2.0, with its high performance and low resource impact. With the new DEEP DIVE 2.0 swatch book, they now give brands and manufacturers a means to pick sustainable color alternatives that satisfy market demand for high-quality medium to dark colors that can be applied immediately.