Spinnova teams up with outdoor brand The North Face

Sustainable textile material company Spinnova is teaming up with outdoor apparel giant The North Face.

Spinnova has signed a development agreement with The North Face to develop new, sustainable, high-performance textiles for the outdoor apparel category. This will start with a “ journey towards commercialising sustainable products” using Spinnova materials.

The North Face will also have access to the first commercial volumes of Spinnova fibre, produced without harmful chemicals, with minimal water usage and with minimal CO2 emissions. It also doesn’t contain any microplastics and is 100 percent circular.

With this tie-up, Spinnova is looking to target the outdoor market, a segment of the apparel industry that it notes is experiencing high growth, by working with The North Face to provide the outdoor segment with a sustainable alternative to conventional textile materials without compromises in technical quality.

Janne Poranen, chief executive and co-founder at Spinnova, said in a statement: “The North Face is a leader in sustainable outdoor apparel. This is a great opportunity for us to continue pushing the limits of our material together with The North Face. Our goal is to set a new standard for the industry in sustainability and high performance.”

The North Face partners with Spinnova to create sustainable outdoor apparel

Oliver Lang, global vice president, product development at The North Face, added: “It’s our over-arching goal to build more circular products, constantly develop innovative materials and to further reduce the environmental impacts of our products. Spinnova is the ideal partner on that journey.”

Global textile material demand is increasing at a “rapid speed,” explains Spinnova, and it is estimated to be as high as 146 million tons annually by 2030.

Spinnova added in a statement that it anticipates that the agreement with The North Face could be a “significant contributor to its market entry,” while adding that it did not anticipate that it would have a material impact on Spinnova’s financial performance in 2021-2022.

This isn’t Spinnova’s first commercial partnership, in September 2020, the Finnish company announced a long-term sustainability deal with Bestseller, which included an investigation into which commercial products in Bestseller’s range of brands such as Vero Moda, Vila and Selected would suit Spinnova’s sustainable fibre.

In February, Spinnova announced plans to build its first commercial factory in Finland to meet the growing demand for sustainable materials from global textile brands. The factory producing Spinnova fibre is expected to begin production at the end of 2022, along with Spinnova’s strategic partner Suzano, the world’s largest cellulose producer. Its long-term business targets include reaching one million tonnes of annual Spinnova fibre production capacity in the next 10-12 years.