Archroma Back at Kingpins Amsterdam With New Sustainable Dye Products
Among the companies returning at the upcoming Kingpins Amsterdam show (April 15-16 at Sugar City) will be Archroma, maker of specialty dyes and chemicals for the textile market. The Swiss company was last at Kingpins Amsterdam in 2019, when they participated in a Denim Talks panel.
At the upcoming shows, Archroma will have a booth at the show, where they will be showing several new developments that produce authentic indigo and true denim black shades without harmful chemicals; as well as a biosynthetic sulfur dye made with a surprising renewable feedstock.
We recently caught up with Dion Cragg, Archroma’s Head of Brand Solutions, EMEA, to talk about the company’s return to Kingpins and to get a little preview of the developments that will be on display in Amsterdam.
What brings you back to Kingpins?
Archroma has made significant advances in both denim coloration and the chemistry behind it. Kingpins is the ideal platform to reconnect with brands, retailers and mills and to share innovations that help the industry move forward – and we’re excited to bring these solutions to Kingpins Amsterdam.
A lot of brands that we interact with have asked. ‘Why can’t we see this at Kingpins?” They say, ‘If we’re going to attend a denim fair, where’s the biggest bang for buck?’ And most of them have chosen Kingpins.
So we’ve always felt that the wider industry is losing out on us not exhibiting and not bringing our technology to that global audience.
What new products will you be highlighting at the Amsterdam show?
We’re bringing a new vision for how denim can look, feel, and perform — with solutions that help the industry move beyond mere compliance or compromise.
We will be showcasing our DENISOL® PURE INDIGO 30, aniline-free indigo, which is a classical indigo without the nasty aniline.
We’ve also got DIRESUL® EVOLUTION BLACK, which is a fairly new innovation where we produce the world’s cleanest sulfur black dye. Sulfur black has been around for decades and there’s been very little innovation. However, we refined the way the product is produced by making it cleaner, using slightly less resources.
A technology that’s been around for a while is our EarthColors®, our biosynthetic sulfur dyes. This range of colors uses agricultural waste as the building block or the feedstock. We’ve now evolved our EarthColors®into a range called FiberColors®. Instead of using agricultural waste as the feedstock, we are using pre-consumer wool to create a biosynthetic sulfur dye.
We’re also showcasing a new breakthrough: Denim Halo. It rethinks distressed denim from the ground up, using a patented pretreatment to create the high-contrast aesthetics consumers love without potassium permanganate or harsh bleaching.
It facilitates easier wash downs and easier lasering of denim garments and eliminates the need for potassium permanganate. It doesn’t compromise the color yield, it doesn’t compromise the fastness. The results have been phenomenal.
Already in global production, Denim Halo shows what the future of denim finishing looks like: safer, more resource-efficient, and ready to scale.
