Sustainability standards are under fire for failing to measure/assess transparency across the textile value chain correctly. What does Haelixa promise?
Traceability is a needed tool to enable trust, transparency, and credible sustainability by providing reliable product information. Haelixa’s mission is to bridge current traceability gaps by physically marking raw materials and identifying them at any supply chain step, proving claims of product origin, recycling, manufacturing and quality. Our traceability programme does not only allow one to trace the raw material from farm to retail but is also able to detect the blending of premium, responsibly sourced fibres with lower quality, non-certified materials as well as mixing of different material lots. Our marker can be applied to raw material, fibre, yarn, or fabric.
How different is the Haelixa traceability programme from the others in its league?
Current traceability systems rely largely on paper-based trails. More recently blockchains have been introduced as the solution to record product data in a way that cannot be corrupted. What such systems have in common is that the product information is detached from the real life products. This makes available chain of custody systems prone to frauds. What can still happen is for instance that a shipment of sustainable cotton (e.g. organic, recycled) is substituted with conventional cotton. In cases like these, there is no way for a blockchain or other chain of custody system to verify if the cotton is still the original one. Haelixa verifies by doing the test on the product itself, where you would immediately see if what the label or the documentation claims is verified and if there has been some intentional or unintentional mixing or substitution.
Take us through the traceability journey that Haelixa takes a cotton shirt from the soil, seed to the product on the shelf.
Here is how this works: the marking is performed on-site as early as possible by spraying the unique formulation designed for the client on the cotton fibres. Samples of yarn, and fabric and finished product are typically verified to confirm correct application and ensure reliable traceability and that product claims can be backed up. Whenever asked, additional testing can be performed on both intermediate and finished products. The brand can then pass the product information onto the end consumers and bring the product story to life using our ingredient label and relying on our marketing support.
As an ingredient brand, what is the kind of consumer-facing branding that Haelixa undertakes? Which textile-fashion-apparel brands are using Haelixa’s services?
The ingredient label ‘Marked and Traced by Haelixa’ allows businesses to inform their clients about their supply chain transparency efforts with the help of our solutions on a solid technological basis. The Haelixa ingredient label can be integrated in the product tag with a QR code which links to a consumer-facing page, including supply chain data and test reports. Well known industry players (e.g. UNECE, Soorty, Diamond Denim, Reinhart) implement our solutions in Europe, Asia and Africa. Garments carrying the label ‘Marked and Trace by Haelixa’ are available in retail stores (among others, Jelmoli and Rinascente).
How MSME-friendly is Haelixa? As in, what is the cost for a small time manufacturer/brand/retailer to get tested and certified by Haelixa?
The solution is very easy to implement and scale; the larger the volumes of fibres to mark and trace, the more affordable it gets. On average we are talking about a cost for traceability of 5 ct per garment.
There’s also an audit fatigue. Too much of testing and too many certifications which also leads to a lot of confusion. Is it not time for an over-arching umbrella body that organises the certification companies according to their USP and skill sets?
That is true, and even worse we all know that certifications in many cases are not effective alone. I believe we can’t move towards a simplification and common guidelines without a little help from legislation, and luckily we are going in that direction. In the greater scheme of things, certifications and traceability are of great addition to each other, as traceability ensures that the claims and standards verified by the certifications are maintained and can be proved across the whole supply chain and consumer-product lifecycle.
