A technology start-up that has developed a proprietary and revolutionary digital on-demand thread dyeing system and a digital dye-to-match colour application, Twine Solutions now has a partner in India to explore the growing textile industry even as it continues to develop new products and solutions for its global outreach strategy
Twine Solutions is an Israeli company, founded in 2015 by twin brothers Alon Moshe and Erez Moshe – hence where the name comes in – who have both spent many years in the digital printing industry. They came up with an amazing idea to revolutionise the textile industry at its very fibre – the yarn. Through various rounds of funding and development, working alongside industry experts and great companies like Delta Galil in Israel, they launched the product at ITMA in 2019. For the past couple of years the team has been focusing on Europe, but has also repositioned itself to exploring business opportunities in Asia Pacific as of January this year.
“That is the time I joined. My role was to identify the right partners to bring on-board in the region. Chemtax in Hong Kong were first, covering China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Vietnam and now Orange O Tec in India,” informs Andy Yarrow, Regional Sales Manager (Asia Pacific), Twine Solutions. “We looked specifically for people with a customer base and good reach in the textile industry,” he adds. For the company, finding the right solutions is top priority. The attempt is to change the dyeing industry forever. “As you know, the textile industry is second only to oil as the world’s most polluting sector. Whilst most digital technology suppliers focus on the end of the supply chain, printing on garments or fabric for example, we are starting at the beginning i.e. dyeing yarn,” Yarrow says.
“But the most important element to all of this is that we do not use any water in our dyeing process and this is what the people, by which I mean the brands and the manufacturers, but most importantly the consumers, are crying out for,” he adds. The company’s current product is the TS-1800, and of course the Twine TDI inks. Together they have brought an on-demand thread and yarn dyeing system to the market. Both the inks and the TS-1800 system are totally revolutionary, and of course designed and developed in Israel, pretty much the home of digital print and digital textile technology.
The official launch of the products was at ITMA in Barcelona and the company is currently on to the second generation, which essentially improves the yarn feeding and tensioning system. It has also introduced lighter inks such as light cyan, light magenta and light yellow, giving better range and coverage of Pantone colours, etc. Twine Solutions does not go into the numbers of systems because obviously it is a start-up even though it has customers in Europe, Israel, and of course Asia Pacific. As for the global market reach, Yarrow prefers to provide details of the Asia Pacific region.
“We recently held a VIP week in Hong Kong where we showed the system to over 30 companies and the feedback was exceptional. As you can imagine, Hong Kong being the sourcing hub for many brands and headquarters to some of the world’s largest manufacturers, we had some very serious players through the door. They all loved what they saw and the feedback was incredible. From my side we are working to close a partnership in Japan, I have calls with Pakistan and Bangladesh lined up as well as also ongoing discussions in Sri Lanka and Thailand. From a company perspective, we are showing the system for the first time in the US at Techtextil next month,” he informs.
Innovative Products
The company has also introduced SnapMatch – beta software aimed at making it even easier to get colours into the TS-1800. Currently it can accept RGB, CMYK and L*a*b* colours plus selected ones from a couple of libraries, one from Twine Solutions and one from Coats, the latter being one of its investors. SnapMatch makes it easier even for a novice with no dyeing experience at all to get the right colour. “What we are also working on is a way to automate the process of getting digital data to Coats so that once our customers are happy with their digitally dyed samples we can automatically send this information to Coats for bulk dyeing,” Yarrow shares.
“I can tell you, one of the world’s biggest sports brands has already made products that are in stores now simply on the back of seeing this feature. Sure, it cost them more money to produce, but they also charged the customer more for these super-cool, unique products,” Yarrow says. Further, Twine Solution offers systems that are suitable for a wide segment of products such as apparel, home textiles, denim, etc. “Research and development, product innovation, sampling, last-mile manufacturing are all target areas for us. As such, all this translates into making products suitable for many manufacturers. I see a big shift towards micro-factories also, so if you are able to print on-demand any colour and design surely you need to be able to stitch it together, or embroider on to it in any colour. The last thing any manufacturer wants is to be able to produce individual items of clothing and then have to stock thousands of bobbins of thread, or worse, wait for the right colour to come in,” Yarrow points out.
The India Market
Elaborating about the India market, Yarrow says: “India is a very important market for us. It is second only to China in terms of textile manufacturing. In fact, I read only this week that exports to the US have grown over 45% this year, so for sure India will be more important as time goes on. As US brands and global consumers demand more sustainable products our solution will help achieve this.” The company has entered into a partnership with Orange O Tec for its India operations – a company that Yarrow describes as “young, dynamic and super-connected in the textile space”. The partnership has already begun to bear fruit with enquiries rolling in over the past eight months. A primary reason for selecting Orange O Tec is their after-sales service network. “They are experienced in supporting internationally manufactured products and they understand the demands of customers in this segment with coverage across India. We will of course support from Israel and as the TS-1800 is Industry 4.0-ready we can dial in and do lots of problem-solving and diagnostics remotely which of course is very important in the current global lockdown phase,” Yarrow states.
Road Ahead
Twine Solutions is moving ahead at a rapid pace. Recently it has secured another USD 28 million of funding from its investors. “We want to support more yarn types, we want to make a faster system, we want to be able to dye even more colours and of course find ways to make the system even more sustainable. We are not saying that the TS-1800 is the end of it all and we are finished developing; we are saying that the TS-1800 is the very beginning of the revolution. This technology is the future, and we urge India’s textile industry to join us on this amazing journey,” Yarrow states.
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Given that this is a new product and a new technology, why should a customer consider investing in the solution? First of all the customers get to be in at the very beginning of a revolution. The most important three things that the company is addressing with the TS-1800 are:
• Sustainability: Twine Solutions would like to play a major role in stopping the horrific poisoning of rivers and waterways that has been happening for many years.
• Enhanced Speed to Market: Twine Solutions does not believe that waiting seven days for a dye to match samples is acceptable in this day and age, nor is it acceptable for people to have to order 3 kg when all they need is a few hundred grams. Thus, if a customer needs 300 grams of a special colour urgently, then dye it on the TS-1800. There would be no waiting for a week and then waste 2.7 kg. For example, one of the company’s customers has identified that this solution can save them 11 days on each of their DTM samples – this is incredible since they may have 800-1,000 DTM samples to produce each year.
• Enable Creativity: One of the really cool things that can be done with the TS-1800 is dye gradients, which basically means you select two or more colours and the system’s colour algorithm creates a super-smooth gradient between each colour, giving a really unique effect.
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India is a very important market for us. It is second only to China in terms of textile manufacturing. In fact, I read only this week that exports to the US have grown over 45% this year, so for sure India will be more important as time goes on. As US brands and global consumers demand more sustainable products our solution will help achieve this.
– Andy Yarrow, Regional Sales Manager (Asia Pacific), Twine Solutions