Pontetorto – the historical textile group from Tuscany celebrating its 70th anniversary this year and a leading business in the sportswear and fashion world – finds Fulgar – a leading company in the production of man-made, innovative and increasingly sustainable yarns – as the ideal partner for a new project aiming at supporting the circular economy in the textile industry.
Presented for the first time at Performance Days, the new collection of fabrics for activewear and fashion by Pontetorto has been entirely made with the revolutionary Q-CYCLE® yarn.
An eco-sustainable yarn obtained from end-of-life tyres, considered to be among the most difficult elements to be disposed of and also a highly polluting factor at a global level. Suffice it to say that every year in Europe only, 1.37 mn tonnes of tyres (40 percent of total production) are not yet recycled but mostly incinerated with high CO2 emissions.
“Our commitment towards a sustainable textile industry – underlines Marco Toccafondi, Head of Pontetorto Sports line – constantly pushes us to both looking for high level partners within the supply chain and finding cutting-edge solutions capable of either accelerating this process and really making the difference for us as a textile manufacturer and for our customers. This is what made of Fulgar an interesting partner company while recognizing Q-CYCLE® as an example of a virtuous story which we hope will be best welcomed by the market”.
Q-CYCLE® yarn is the result of an innovative chemical recycling technology, the pyrolysis, which is part of BASF’s ChemCycling™ recycling project and Fulgar’s spinning technology. “Pyrolysis” can be applied to any plastic waste that cannot be recycled mechanically such as end-of-life tyres and also allows the material to be returned to its virgin state. This technology is two-fold virtuous by being self-sufficient: the waste portion which cannot be transformed into raw material is pyrolysed into gas and used to generate the energy required for the entire recycling process. The recycled content is allocated to the final product by using a third-party controlled mass balance approach.
Q-CYCLE® is an innovative polyamide with as many functional and aesthetic benefits as the virgin polyamide (lightness, strength and resistance) yet featured by a “green” added valued. A perfect yarn for producing high quality and eco-sustainable fabrics.
Alan Garosi – Head of Marketing at Fulgar says: “We are particularly proud of collaborating with such a prestigious and benchmark group as Pontetorto. We, as Fulgar, are so happy to be able to contribute to the creation of a new-generation as well as more and more sustainability-oriented textile supply chain. Thanks to the work with BASF, Q-CYCLE® allows us to build value for our brand and to assert the excellence of Made in Italy. It is about a cutting-edge solution with such a remarkable potential as to allow us in a not too distant future to recycle even pre- and post-production waste from the textile sector thus making production totally circular in the same chain.
The new sportswear and fashion collection by Pontetorto: A preview of the full collection is being held at Performance Days on April 27-28 in Munich by featuring 3 highly technical ranges.
• Art. 9223/M/QCYCLE from the Tecnostretch Bio family: excellent thermal insulation and an outstanding tight-fitting elastic structure for excellent muscle support with outer Q-CYCLE® and biodegradable inner Tencel.
• Art. 9224/RSME/QCYCLE, a base layer combining wool in direct skin contact with outer Q- CYCLE® for excellent thermal insulation and greater breathability.
• Art. 9226/QCYCLE for technical city wear: double Q-CYCLE® nylon on the front and Tencel stretch on the back for total comfort in breathable t-shirts and leggings.
