Printing technology to reduce textile wastage

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has estimated that 87% of the total fiber inputs used in the clothing industry end up in landfills or incinerators. Only 1% of the textile produced for clothing is recycled. The ecological and environmental impacts have driven the fashion sector to reevaluate and seek more sustainable solutions toward inventory management, including on-demand digital production reducing over-inventory issues.

Kornit Digital, established in 2002 with its headquarters in Tel Aviv has over 5 offices in the USA, Europe and the Asia Pacific. The company provides innovative digital printing technologies for garment, apparel and textile industries. This is a high speed direct to garment and direct to fabric printing solutions enabling local on-demand production of short and micro-runs at retail quality, shortening lead times from months to days or even minutes and eliminating inventory.  Their NeoPigment printing process ensures zero waste and avoids excess manufacturing of clothes that go un-purchased which in turn supports a sustainable manufacturing process.

The main aim of Kornit Digital is to help brands solve their production challenges with the aid of smart, digital solutions for on-demand manufacturing. Their main aim is to provide sustainable solutions with respect to economically, environmentally and socially, and also powers consumer self-expression.

The fashion industry has a technologically advanced design and consumer-facing front-end that pushes the envelope, but a lagging production and fulfillment back-end that is analog and does not adapt fast enough. For many years it has been about digital samples, digital showrooms, digital designs, but not digital production. Kornit aims to streamlines and digitizes a multitude of analog processes to join the back-end production to the front-end.

The company’s main aim to counter the environmental impacts starts with zero-waste printing. The printing process is completely dry which consumes lesser machinery and utilizes less water. It is eco-friendly and does not use any harmful chemicals. Their technology is safe on clothes and fabrics as it aligns with the Oeko-Tex standard 100.

Brands gain the most out of the Kornit technology when the distance between their production and the end consumer is the shortest. A short and digitized supply chain provides shortened time-to-market and less wasteful fulfillment options.