Welspun India, part of Welspun Group, and DuPont Biomaterials partnered to launch a new bio-based home textile collection, which includes bath towels and bedsheets, to fulfill the growing demand for sustainable home textiles.

The collaboration brings together cotton and DuPont™ Sorona® fibers to create home textile textiles that offer great stretch, comfort, moisture management, a luxurious drape, and a smooth, soft, and hand feel.

Welspun's home textiles collection includes more than 30 innovations, including Nanocore® technology, which keeps dust mites and other allergens from entering home linens, and  HygroCotton® technology, which traps air in its core to make terry towels more voluminous after each wash while naturally regulating the temperature of a bedsheet.

Wel-Trak™, a patented multi-level traceability process that tracks finished products back to their source materials, has also been introduced by the company.

Fibers manufactured with DuPont's 37% plant-based Sorona polymer are currently used in athleisure and sports clothing, insulation, swimwear, outerwear, suiting, and faux fur, among other applications. Softness, stretch, and recovery, and intrinsic stain resistance are among the technical and performance benefits provided by the polymer, which eliminates the need for topical treatments. Sorona is an Oeko-Tex Standard 100 and USDA Certified Biobased product.

Dr. Gowri Nagarajan, regional sales and marketing manager at DuPont Biomaterials, said that Welspun India challenged them to create a fiber innovation that will enable them to offer noticeable value addition to their end consumers while also providing a sustainable solution. They were able to produce the Sorona fiber in a configuration that allows it to be used in a variety of applications, such as towels and bedsheets.

Welspun India's senior vice president of innovation, Umasankar Mahapatra, said that recently, they've observed an increase in demand for textile materials that offer well-rounded performance in the most sustainable way possible at both the fiber and fabric level. They've been working with their suppliers to achieve this performance, and DuPont has a long history of innovation in the areas of comfort, stretch, and moisture management. The invention of the performance stretch Sorona Agile fabric without the use of spandex is extraordinary. It can resist industrial wash conditions for the duration of the fabric's life without losing any of its characteristics. Other Sorona yarns are now being integrated into home textile applications by their teams.