Many Fashion Retailers Are Involved In The Organic Cotton Traceability Pilot Project.

The pilot project of organic cotton traceability (Fashion Organic Good) has been successfully completed in the first stage by the Holland fashion innovation platform, such as the C&A Foundation of C&A for, and the organic cotton accelerator Organic Cotton Accelerator (hereinafter referred to as OCA).

The project started in mid 2018 and provided technical support from Colorado science and technology start-ups Bext360. The main task is to track the sources of organic cotton in detail by using various technologies including block chain and DNA spray marking, ensuring that the supply chain of organic cotton is completely pparent and ensures its true material in all links from farm production to cotton gin to the final consumer.

Including French luxury giant Kering, European fashion business platform Zalando, American fashion retail group PVH Corp, Holland fast fashion retail group C&A, many fashion, luxury and retail giants are partners in the project.

In the first stage, the project has carried out and completed technical tests with some 100 cotton farms in India and local textile manufacturer Pratibha Syntex.

Fashion for Good's project representative Pim Kneepkens said that the organic cotton traceability pilot project is based on the principle that the cotton containing the DNA labeled and fluorescent labeled liquid sprayed in the field should be left on the top, leaving information markers.

Then, when the crop passes through different production nodes, the information in the marker is obtained through scanning.

The results of the scanning will be imported into a recording system created by block chain technology to monitor the whole production process of cotton.

C&A Foundation is an organization that provides financial support and management for C&A international retail chain. Organic cotton is one of the main concerns of C&A Foundation. 60% of the global textile products are currently used as raw materials for cotton.

C&A Foundation spokeswoman Stephanie Klotz said, "this project is unique. It combines various technologies from different brands, groups and research institutes."

Stephanie Klotz pointed out that because the demand for organic cotton is far greater than that of supply, the problem of counterfeiting and shoddy is particularly serious. The traditional cotton certification method takes a long time and requires a lot of manual paperwork, which can not meet the needs of the market.

Pim Kneepkens added: "the tags we use are very durable to ensure that information can be read from the entire production process.

In the test phase, we will do manual testing and collect samples to verify whether these tags can always be detected and compare to ensure that the results are consistent.

Pim Kneepkens revealed that they plan to use machines to scan and collect data in the future, which will shorten the test time to a few seconds.

Bext360 has extensive experience in block chain applications, and has successfully developed block chain related technology applications in the supply chain of coffee, chocolate, palm oil and other products.

Last May, Fashion for Good and Bext360 worked together to promote the organic cotton retroactive test.

Stephanie Klotz said that this research has gathered a large number of partners, "with the help of open cloud, Zalando, PVH Corp and C&A, the first stage is possible."

But she refused to disclose the exact cost of the project.

The next step of the project is to test whether the technology is still effective from the yarn processing to the finished product and the sale.

Pim Kneepkens said: "the next thing to test is whether these markers can withstand all kinds of chemical processes used in the production process, and whether it has the possibility of widespread promotion from an economic perspective."

Pim Kneepkens said that the system may eventually provide services for up to 40 thousand agricultural names. However, the introduction of large-scale reforms to an industry may cause a big rebound, so they are trying to reduce the impact on all aspects of the entire supply chain.

Stephanie Klotz said: "it is too early to discuss when this technology will be put into use. We are still in the initial stage, but we want to announce what we are doing."