Recover partners with ADM to scale traceable recycled cotton

Artistic Denim Mills Ltd. (ADM) is reaffirming its contribution to driving circularity and traceability in the denim industry through a new alliance.

The vertically integrated denim group from Karachi, Pakistan, has signed an exclusive global strategic agreement with Recover Textile Systems, S.L. to include the Spanish material sciences firm’s certified and traceable recycled cotton in its collections. The multi-year agreement allows ADM to increase its use of recycled cotton from post-consumer denim while still providing clients with the degree of transparency that is becoming increasingly important in the responsible industry.

ADM and Recover are committed to achieving circular fashion and providing innovative, cost-effective recycled fibers. They aim to incorporate new manufacturing options and technologies as part of the strategic partnership. Furthermore, they will collaborate to create new fiber blends and yarns that combine Recover recycled fiber with sustainable cotton, and Recover will install their fiber processing equipment within ADM’s new facilities.

ADM’s CEO, Faisal Ahmed, said the new facility ADM is building in Pakistan will produce 100,000 kg of yarn per day, which is enough to produce 250,000 yards of fabric per day. He added they have plans to expand and add in more machines. But, one move at a time.

About a year ago, ADM started sourcing recycled cotton from Recover’s facility in Spain. Ahmed is optimistic that now is the right time to move forward with the relationship, adding that many major brands intend to include Recover in their Spring/Summer 2022 collections after some collaboration and work to optimize the fiber composition.

Recover is known for its low-impact, upcycled, high-quality fiber made with unique recycling techniques that maintain the longest fiber length, as trusted by companies like Tommy Hilfiger, Kontoor Brands, and G-Star Raw. The firm collects and sorts old garments and textile waste, and cuts and shreds it into fresh Recover fabric, such as R-Denim, Recover’s unbleached recycled cotton fiber made from post-consumer denim. After that, the fibers are spun into yarns for new uses.

A million pairs of R-Denim jeans save 1.3 billion liters of water, the equivalent of 537 Olympic-size swimming pools, and 2 million kg of CO2, the equivalent of 417 people’s annual emissions.

Recover makes the “lowest-impact cotton fiber in the global industry and kindly outperforms virgin comparable fabrics in all sustainability metrics, according to the Higg MSI Index. The organization tracks and reports on the environmental efficiency of its fiber materials, and all references to sustainability are backed up by third-party certifications and analyses performed by Recover using the Life Cycle Assessment methodology.

In addition, the company claims that, as opposed to other alternatives, it is the only flexible recycled fiber with traceability. Recover received investment from Story3 Capital last year to increase its recycled cotton fiber production by over 16 times over the next five years. To maintain traceability across the supply chain, Recover uses the Global Recycled Standard (GRS) certification.