Natural Cotton Business Case

TCBL BUSINESS CASES

NATURAL COTTON

Co-funded by Horizon 2020

ANNEX I TO TCBL D 4.2, 15 JULY 2017

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CONTENTS Contents..................................................................................................................................... 2 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 3 1.

The European Value Chain of Natural Cotton ................................................................... 5 Natural Cotton Production in the EU ...................................................................................... 5 Challenges for the Ginning Industry ....................................................................................... 6 Yarns Production – Carding (and combing) and Spinning ..................................................... 7 Woven Cotton Fabrics Production ......................................................................................... 7 Knitted Cotton Fabrics production .......................................................................................... 8 Dyeing and finishing ............................................................................................................... 8 Sustainability Paths for Natural Cotton Based Apparel ......................................................... 9 Other Uses of Cotton ............................................................................................................. 9

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Implementation Scenario ................................................................................................. 10 Implementation Scenario ....................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

Phase I ................................................................................................................................. 10 Phase II ................................................................................................................................ 11 Phase III ............................................................................................................................... 11 Expected outputs ................................................................................................................. 11

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Progress to Date.............................................................................................................. 13 Selection of Participating Associates ................................................................................... 13 Implementation ..................................................................................................................... 14

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First Results and Outputs Achieved ................................................................................ 17 Contribution to TCBL objectives .......................................................................................... 18 Other Outputs ....................................................................................................................... 18

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Next Steps ....................................................................................................................... 20

Document Information .............................................................................................................. 23

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INTRODUCTION The Natural Cotton case instantiates the more general concern of TCBL to promote sustainable and eco-friendly choices in textile and clothing value chain by privileging the use of natural materials (cotton, silk, wool, ‌). The case will exploit the increasing interest of consumers for eco-sustainable products, which is already an existing market trend offering new business opportunities. In business terms, Natural Cotton case aims to test and illustrate the advantage, for all those involved in, of rebuilding traceable European value-chains producing and valorising these natural materials. What is at stake, by rebuilding these valuechains, is not only to valorise these raw materials but also to save and exploit better the accumulated knowledge and know-how existing at each step of their transformation in final products, which is often a precious, but neglected, competitive advantage of EU producers.

The expected result of the Natural Cotton case, in macro-economic terms, is to increase the share of added-value of EU origin in the final products sold in Europe.

The Natural Cotton case is not only trying to rebuild the value-chain but also to revitalise them by renewing the way they operate. This will be notably done by identifying and promoting R&D results and technical innovations allowing to transform these raw materials using less resources (in water and energy notably) for producing better quality final products and innovative ones, with a recognised market value by the consumers, allowing a better remuneration of those involved in the production process. This revitalisation will also be achieved through the building of more direct connexions between the producers, those using their products and the clients of their clients, Europewide, creating more personalised relationships and interactions, which themselves are expected to contribute to a better understanding of market demands by producers and the enrichment of the consumers’ knowledge of the value and origin of the products they purchase.

In concrete terms, the Natural Cotton case started from the impulse of one associate enterprise of TCBL involved in cotton ginning in Greece. It revealed the existence of cotton of EU origin to the TCBL community and promoted its quality.

The first step for implementing the case has been the constitution of a working group composed of associated enterprises of TCBL covering all the steps of the value-chain: providing sustainable cotton seeds to cotton growers, assisting them in obtaining high quality (long fibres) cotton, certifying their production, ginning this cotton, spinning, knitting, designing and confectioning cotton clothes and shops selling them. To map the position of these actors in the value chain the experts of TCBL partners involved in this case experimented the use Orchestrator and BpSquare, and to describe their needs, plans and objectives they experimented the use Strategyzer. This allowed to produce some alternative collaboration proposals to the working group.

The group finally decided to work together for putting on the market a set of new garments which will be based on a fully traced production chain from the cotton grower to the final product with certified origin and quality of the cotton fibres used (Greek Certified Sustainable Extra-Long Fibres). This second step terminated successfully by producing in time and exposing during the #2017 TCBL Conference in Athens, in June 2017 samples of the produced set of new garments.

It is interesting to notice that this was the first time that the involved members of this value chain have worked together and have had a direct contact with those involved in steps further than the immediate previous and next one. This new experience allowed to identify new needs of knowledge sharing and new dynamics in working together. It allowed already to, experimentally, extend an existing certification scheme for ginned cotton to cotton yarns or threads.

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Natural Cotton TCBL Business Cases Textile & Clothing Business Labs

The working group will be invited to continue its interactions on Thela platform, where progressively other TCBL associate members will be invited to join for designing additional experiments, which will integrate in their production or their sales the products made out of this certified of high-quality, sustainable cotton of EU origin.

The requirements on which these new collaborations will be based will feed specifications in Sqetch platform in view to find other companies or individual, outside of TCBL, involved in the natural cotton value chain to exploit the intermediary or final products of this value chain.

In parallel, the successful implementation of the Cotton Case paves the way for new cases on other Natural Fibres for which clusters of Associated Enterprises who joined in 2016 and 2017 the TCBL Ecosystem have already been identified: Silk, Hemp, Citrus and Wool.

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1.

THE EUROPEAN VALUE CHAIN OF NATURAL COTTON

Consumers are increasingly interested in purchasing ecologically and socially sustainable products rather than making low-cost purchases: a recent survey showed that 51 per cent of European consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable products. 1 This creates new business opportunities that are currently not exploited because it requires businesses to make costly changes in the way goods are manufactured (e.g. in the provision of materials and production processes). Moreover, different certification schemes make it difficult for the consumer to understand to what extent the product they purchase has been manufactured in a wholly sustainable manner.

The TCBL natural cotton case addresses this problem by linking like-minded businesses in a new collaborative venture to produce a fully traceable (and certified) organic cotton products which can be sold at a fair price. Covering the whole value chain, these businesses collaborate to produce and process cotton which is certified and traceable at each step from ginning through to garment production.

As a result, the cotton case aims to demonstrate the feasibility of sustainable cotton which is produced entirely in the EU thereby setting the scene for an expansion of this experiment to other natural fibres (most notably silk, hemp and citrus fibres). Along the way, the business case will draw on the expertise of TCBL labs and services to enrich and scale up the work.

By locating enterprises in natural fibre value chains more closely together, and avoiding imports and exports from beyond the EU, scaling of production will be facilitated and the case will make a contribution to reducing the environmental impact of textiles production (most notably energy use) as well as increasing manufacturing capacity.

NATURAL COTTON PRODUCTION IN THE EU Even if the EU cotton market is entirely open (not protected by tariffs) and there are no export subsidies and while due to the latest EU reform in the cotton regime in 2006, cotton production ceased in Portugal, it stills alive in two member-states: Greece and Spain. It represents only 2% of the world’s cotton production and its main part is exported: exports account on average for more than 90% of cotton production of both countries in 2016 2.

In Greece, the area of cotton grown, after reaching its peak in 1995/96, had dropped to 383,000 hectares in 2006 and 230.000 in 2016. In Spain, the cotton area declined substantially in 1993/94 due to drought, but it revived in 1997/98, reaching 114,000 hectares.

Since then the area has declined, it had fallen to 63,000 hectares since 2006 4.

EU cotton production fluctuated until peaking at 1.8 million tonnes in 1999/2000 and is currently below 0,3 million tonnes, mainly coming from Greece (240.000 tons) and Spain (60.000 tons) 4.

In Greece, more than 150,000 families in depend directly or indirectly for their living on the cotton sector, and cotton production accounted for 9.1% of the value of final agricultural output in 2005. Hence, the cotton sector is very important for the Greek economy and particularly for certain regions (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics, Level 2 – NUTS2): that is, Clutier, D (2017) “SUSTAINABLE FASHION: MARKET AND MARKETING TRENDS” Presentation at #TCBL_2017 Athens (https://myminds.be/share/page/site/tcbl/documentdetails?nodeRef=workspace://SpacesStore/473c4cf8-8807-49ef-a62b-d73ccb178d4f) 1

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Cotton: World Markets and Trade, United States Department of Agriculture - Foreign Agricultural Service -June 2017

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Thessalia, Central Macedonia and East Macedonia. Cotton production in Greece is characterized mainly by single-crop cultivation on small farms.

In Spain, 98% of cotton production takes place in Andalusia. In 2006 there were 9,500 producers mainly concentrated in Sevilla, Cadiz and Cordoba. Cotton production constitutes only 1.3% of the value of the final agricultural product in Spain, but it is important for the economy of these areas. Most of the producers grow cotton on less than 10 hectares where they also grow other crops – mainly wheat, maize, sunflower and sugar beet. Farms totally dedicated to cotton production account for 38% of the total number of farms.

Big challenges for this activity are to improve the quality of the products (longer and more resistant fibres), to improve the processes (use of less fertilizers, less water and less energy) to dismiss a bad fame about its ecological impact, to consider how the growing organic cotton demand can be faced in sustainable terms in EU and if not to find alternatives able to provoke an equivalent respect and interest from customers based on global sustainability and traceability considerations (ecological but also social and economic sustainability.

This last option has been the one taken as starting point in TCBL Business Case on Natural Cotton, which started by promoting the use of Cotton produced according to Certified Sustainable Processes under a new certification scheme for Certified Sustainable Fibres of EU origin initiated by Bayer with the TCBL Associate Enterprise leading our TCBL Business case, Thrakika Ekkokistiria.

CHALLENGES FOR THE GINNING INDUSTRY The ginning industry is closely linked with cotton production, and both constitute a supply chain that cannot survive if broken. Cotton ginning plants are located close to their suppliers, due to the sensitive nature of raw material and cost of transport.

From the field, seed cotton moves to nearby gins for separation of lint and seed. The cotton first goes through dryers to reduce moisture content and then through cleaning equipment to remove foreign matter. These operations facilitate processing and improve fibre quality. The cotton is then air conveyed to gin stands where revolving circular saws pull the lint through closely spaced ribs that prevent the seed from passing through.

The lint is removed from the saw teeth by air blasts or rotating brushes, and then compressed into bales weighing approximately 480 pounds. Cotton is then moved to a warehouse for storage until it is shipped to a textile mill for use.

A typical gin will process about 12 bales per hour, while some of today’s more modern gins may process as many as 60 bales an hour.

CAP reform for cotton of 2006 has shaken the already fragile EU ginning industry. Capacity utilization thus fell from 72% in 2005 to 20% in 2006 in Spain. In Greece capacity utilization fell less (from 61% to 43%). In 2016 production is estimated to 1 Million bales 4.

In Greece, most cotton ginning plants are concentrated in Macedonia, Thessaly and in Mainland Greece. The supply of ginned cotton is fragmented, since even the largest enterprises cover only a small part of domestic production. The main customers of cotton ginning plants are thread - yarn manufacturing enterprises, which use ginned cotton as a raw material, Demand for products in the sector depends on the performance of the yarn industry, itself depending on the demand for cotton threads and fabrics. Due to the decline of these sectors these last years in Greece, most production units are now involved in intense export activity, selling their products to clients in foreign markets but as most ginning units do not have direct

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access to them they sell their production to brokers at prices very exposed to international market price fluctuations. Both the prices and the volumes are affected by them. Volume of sales is indeed also affected, as the ostensible consumption of ginned cotton fluctuates significantly from year - to - year-due to the inventories kept by companies when prices prevailing on international market are not financially advantageous and to the variation in the quantity of exports.

But the main problem is that this channel of sales through brokers does not give any price incentives for improved quality, while their clients, and the clients of their clients are more and more concerned by the quality, the sustainability and the traceability of the materials used in the products they buy.

This disconnection is a major strategic threat for the natural cotton ginning industry. It was the main starting point of this TCBL Business Case: offer a direct access to clients and to the clients of the clients of the ginning company leading this TCBL Case (Thrakika Ekkokistiria) is not only a mean to gain a recognition, in price terms, of the best quality produced but also a way to improve the share of best quality products in total sales and to adapt to new demands of final customers the quality and sustainability of the processes used and the products offered, while creating long-term partnerships with identified and valuable clients.

YARNS PRODUCTION – CARDING (AND COMBING) AND SPINNING Yarns production is the next step of the value chain. It is also dependant on the previous step.

In Greece, for instance cotton threads account for approximately 78% of domestic yarn production, with the trend being upward.

Before spinning the cotton in yarns it is carded and (for more demanding clients) cumbed.

Carded cotton is cotton which has been prepared for spinning into thread or yarn. Carding is an important step in the processing of many textiles, ensuring that debris is removed while aligning the fibers to make them easier to spin. Without carding, cotton thread would be coarse and extremely fragile.

Combed cotton is an extremely soft version of cotton made by specially treating the cotton fibers before they are spun into yarn. Combed cotton is extremely soft and silky to the touch, and it tends to be more expensive, because a higher volume of cotton is removed during processing.

In our TCBL business case, the spinning company involved (Varvaressos SA) was not buying its cotton from the TCBL associate enterprise leading our case (Thrakika Ekkokistiria). For this spinning company the interest was first to get a better quality cotton (longer fibres) with a sustainability certification and a traceability of origin of interest for its clients abroad. The business case provided also a new, prestigious in Greece, Greek client (Ioanna Kourbela fashion company) for fibres made out of this cotton at a moment when most of the spinning company’s production has almost exclusively clients abroad, opening new collaboration perspectives. Finally, a perspective to obtain a sustainability certification (from Bayer) for the yarns produced out of the specific quality of cotton used in TCBL’s business case is an additional interest for participating in it.

W OVEN COTTON FABRICS PRODUCTION Woven Cotton it is a thick fabric which is very durable. It is heavy weight with rich, vibrant colours. It is available by sling length or roll. They are woven by craftsmen using first quality

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Natural Cotton TCBL Business Cases Textile & Clothing Business Labs

pure cotton thread which is made from two threads rolled together to produce one final thread.

The natural colour of the cotton is off-white. This is a beautiful and stylish fabric which is also suitable for light contact use. Woven cotton is also thinner and enables a better flow of air without sacrificing the filtration.3 One variety of woven cotton is Denim. Denim is a sturdy cotton warp-faced textile in which the weft passes under two or more warp threads. This twill weaving produces a diagonal ribbing that distinguishes it from cotton duck. The most common denim is indigo denim, in which the warp thread is dyed, while the weft thread is left white. As a result of the warp-faced twill weaving, one side of the textile is dominated by the blue warp threads and the other side is dominated by the white weft threads. This causes blue jeans to be white on the inside. The indigo dyeing process, in which the core of the warp threads remains white, creates denim's signature fading characteristics4.

In our first experiment of this TCBL Business Case we did not use this production process, but the alternative one (knitting). Next year experiments including this phase are planned.

KNITTED COTTON FABRICS PRODUCTION Small production units, usually conceived for small runs, continue to produce knitted cotton fabrics in EU. They are often acting as small fashion designers’ facilities, sometimes fully integrated in their proper value-chain, as in our experiment (the knitting of cotton was made in the facilities of our Associate Enterprise, Ioanna Kourbela).

Typical use of knitted cotton suits for t-shirts, but more complex and more fashionable garments, like the samples produced for this TCBL Business Case by Ioanna Kourbela can be made using it.

Amongst the main challenges of these units is to use the facilitations provided by new equipment and technologies to automate parts of the work, while keeping the skills of their workforce at high level and producing at competitive costs in full respect of the social responsibility and sustainability constraints.

In our experiment for this TCBL Business Case the unit involved in this stage of production proved a very interesting competitive advantage: its high flexibility and capacity to handle within very restricted deadlines a short run of completely new samples apart of the rest of the production, allowing a full traceability -and isolation from the others -of the materials used.

During the next period, the involvement of other units of this type in the Business Case will be sought, while the possible integration of inputs coming from the TCBL Business Case on Short Runs will be considered.

DYEING AND FINISHING Dyeing and finishing of woven fabrics is a stage of the value chain in which Prato district has a great reputation.

For knitted cotton dyeing is done on yarns, before knitting, as it was the case in our first experiment for the TCBL Natural Cotton Business Case. In our case it was done in a small dyeing unit close to Athens.

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Source: https://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080418204424AAcac6n

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Source: Wikipedia

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Natural Cotton TCBL Business Cases Textile & Clothing Business Labs

This step of the production uses a lot of additives and artificial substances. Chemicals are released daily in nature destroying the environment around us to satisfy the colour demands that designers, industry and consumers create.

Programs like DETOX from GreenPeace are trying to get attention to this issue, trying to identify the real environmental costs we are paying and asking for more research in this field to substitute chemicals and procedures with less harmful ones.

We expect that our TCBL Business Case on Eco-friendly will provide some solutions to this for those involved in the Natural Cotton Business Case during next year.

In the frame of TCBL, the TextileLab Amsterdam and Athens’ Making Lab are researching about bacterial dyes as an alternative, on one side focusing on creative experimentation and on the other side exploring scalability and impact of this process and outcomes.

We expect that our TCBL Business Case on Natural Cotton will be able to experiment this solution in the coming year.

SUSTAINABILITY PATHS FOR NATURAL COTTON BASED APPAREL Wherever in EU there is still some clothing industry it still uses natural cotton fabrics to a large extend.

The Greek fashion company involved in our experiment, is manufacturing its own clothes in its own premises.

Ioanna Kourbela, has a long tradition of using exclusively natural fibres originating from Greece and commitments in terms of sustainability. Its active and crucial participation in the TCBL Business Case of TCBL offered the possibility to have a first sample of specifically designed for this purpose elegant garments produced and exposed during #2017 TCBL Conference.

Through its participation Ioanna Kourbela discovered new materials, new providers and intends to develop with the other participants (and new ones) a better traceability of the origin, the processes and the materials used by the company and be able to better convince its customers about the unicity of its collections and their strong compliance to sustainability concerns.

OTHER USES OF COTTON Cotton is used all over EU in furniture production, in pharmaceutical products (hydrophile cotton - nappies), in shoes production and combined with other materials for a lot of other uses. These uses represent however, overall, a small part of the total use of cotton produced.

During next year an extension of the Natural Cotton Business Case in such fields is envisaged.

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IMPLEMENTATION SCENARIO

The generation of this Business Case emerged out an in-depth analysis of the information provided by the associate enterprises during the Call for Expression of interest of 2016 with a view towards UNDERSTANDING the value chains to which they belong, their specific activities within them, their motivation to be involved in TCBL, their expectations, needs and proposals addressed in TCBL. Out of this round emerged the identification that in the Natural Cotton Value Chain we had one enterprise motivated to take the lead of a Business Case with those involved in this value chain. This step was concluded by a MAPPING of those involved in the value chain, which proved that we had in TCBL enterprises able to cover all the steps of the value chain. The general methodology, process and results leading to the selection of the Natural Cotton Value Chain as a potentially interesting field for building a Business Case.

After this initial identification followed an analysis of the identified Business Case Leader’s concerns, activities and strategic interests in view to propose him some alternative scenarios for a first pilot experiment which will meet them, could take advantage of the services and tools TCBL can offer and would be of interest for other TCBL Associate Enterprises. Out of this round a proposal has been formulated by two TCBL experts and has been validated by the TCBL partnership, based on the following criteria: • • •

•

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Level of motivation of the Leader Importance of expected impact (at local, regional, national and/or EU level) Capacities and availability of the Leader, the associates members part of the Business Case and of the TCBL partners offering the support services (WP4 support, Lab services, Online Business Services), needed to implement the Business Case The interest of the Business Case for TCBL (eg its originality, the possibilities offered to use, test and improve the TCBL ecosystem by generating meaningful interactions between its members and by using the services provided by them) Its transferability (eg if it could be a model applicable to define other Business Cases in the future, if the lessons learned can serve to future Business Cases and experiments and if the results expected – notably in terms of business models generated by the Case - can convince enough companies to participate, later, to their adoption and further deployment)

This proposal has been addressed to the Business Case leader for discussion. Out of successive interactions the focus has been adjusted to his core interests: increase the share of best quality Cotton, establish direct contacts with industries using it, work on extending to the next steps of the value chain both the traceability of its use and the sustainability certification scheme currently applicable only for the Cotton growing and Cotton ginning stages. After that an implementation plan has been agreed and a first circle of TCBL Associate Enterprises has been invited to join the Business Case and co-design and co-realise its further implementation in January 2017.

The implementation of this Business Case is organised in 3 phases, each one corresponding to TCBL’s pilot phases.

PHASE I The objective of this Phase was to Constitute a Core Group covering all stages of the value chain, Set Concrete Objectives, Share and Plan Tasks and Produce Tangible Outputs and Results Validating the Business case. This included the following steps:

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Natural Cotton TCBL Business Cases Textile & Clothing Business Labs • • • • • •

•

Select and contact a Core Group of TCBL Associate Enterprise to involve them in the Business Case Meeting them and define with them a first experiment Define and plan the transactions and actions required and who undertakes them Initiate the transactions and actions Monitor the respect of planned deadlines Deliver a set of final products fully traced and respectful of sustainability concerns, proving that the Business Scenario can work and brings benefits to all the involved actors Evaluate and Promote these first results

PHASE II The objective of Phase II is to scale, promote, systematise, and extend the pilot experience.

This includes the following steps: •

• • •

•

Use the experiment to persuade others to join the Business Case with new experiments: o The 10 TCBL Associates of 2016 potentially interested and not yet involved (including weaving and dyeing units not included in Phase I) o The 28 TCBL Associates of 2017 having declared a very high interest for this Business Case Scale up with them the volumes of transactions initiated in Phase I by the Core Group, with orders compatible with economically sustainable costs and prices Test the market acceptance to pay the price of the higher quality, higher sustainability and higher traceability of the intermediate and final products offered Enrich the case (using TCBL Labs offers, tools, advisors, other cases...) : extend traceability (farm level5) and certification (yarns and textiles), use tools to study business models (Strategyzer), use tools to deal with more actors (Thela, Sqetch), and more simultaneous experiments (Orchestrator), experiment solutions from other Business Cases ( Short Runs, Bacteria Dying, Eco-friendly production, Independents) Transpose the Business Case to other EU Natural Fibres value chains (Silk, Hemp, Wool, Citrus…)

PHASE III This phase will aim to involve bigger actors, including in distribution and retail, cases outside T&C and will focus on broader impact evaluation (at business, ecological and macro-level).

EXPECTED OUTPUTS The expected outputs are summarised in this table produced, recently, by TCBL’s internal evaluators team:

related post on TCBL’s facebook: http://www.facebook.com/124666714540921/posts/379997839007806/ 5See

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Key outcomes of the three cotton case phases

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PROGRESS TO DATE

SELECTION OF PARTICIPATING ASSOCIATES Out of an initial list of 14 potentially interested TCBL Associates (see Annex I), 3 have been actively involved in the Core Group running the Natural Cotton Business Case in Phase I: • • •

Emmanouela Kouroudi of Thrakika Ekkokistiria SA (http://www.thrakika.gr ): ginning the Certified Sustainable Natural Cotton of EU origin used and leader of the case Giannis Tzortzis of Varvaressos SA (https://www.varvaressos.eu/en/ : spinning the ginned cotton provided by Thrakika Ekkokistiria Pantelis Kourbelas, founder of Ioanna Kourbela SA (http://ioannakourbela.com ): knitting the yarns provided by Varvaressos and designing and producing the 9 garment samples produced in the framework of the Business Case

For Cotton seeds provision and certification issues Bayer Hellas was added to the group, as Bayer Hellas is providing these seeds to growers providing Thrakika Ekkokistiria with cotton and is certifying with a CSF (Certified Sustainable Fibres) certificate6 the origin, the quality and the sustainability of all the production process (up to ginning) of the higher quality cotton (Macrogen – characterized by long and resistant cotton fibres) of Thrakika Ekkokistiria.

It has been decided that this specific cotton will be used as the traceable raw material from which a sample of garments using it as exclusive raw material will be produced in the framework of the Natural Cotton Business Case in Phase I. This group covers a complete value chain, including all the necessary advisors to perform the job: • • • • • • • •

Sustainable cotton seeds provider Ginning factory Spinning factory Knitting factory Designer department Retail network Certification body for sustainable fibers Advisor on 3D CAD systems and other IT solutions for clothing

Finally, the added-value of TCBL is clear, because no one of the participants had worked previously with more than one other in the past and all acknowledge the interest of the proposed aggregation of efforts and interests, for pursuing the objectives of the TCBL’s Natural Cotton Business Case (build an alliance for promoting sustainable European cotton based productions, make their specific quality and value recognised and increase the recognised value of such productions by final users in Greece and in EU).

This group was assisted in the design and implementation of the case by two TCBL experts (Athanase Contargyris and Francesco Molinari) and in its contacts by M.Meletis Karabinis.

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See more on it on: http://www.certifiedfibermax.gr/en/

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Some of the actors of Natural Cotton Business Case in #2017 TCBL Conference –06/17 Mr P.Kourbela (Ioanna Kourbela), Mr G.Tzortzis (Varvaressos SA), Mrs E.Kouroudi (Thrakika Ekkokistiria) Mr A.Contargyris (TCBL expert), Mrs K.Rigopoulou (Ioanna Kourbela), a representative of Bayer Hellas

IMPLEMENTATION THE INITIAL SCENARIO HAS BEEN CONCEPTUALISED AND DESCRIBED USING STRATEGYZER….

The TCBL experts used this tool, which is part of the TCBL toolkit, in their initial interaction with the Leader of the Business Case (Thrakika Ekkokistiria) to understand and define the business strategy and the business concept motivating the activation of the Business Case and the changes it could bring in the business activity of the Business Case leader.

AND ITS IMPLEMENTATION HAS BEEN PLANNED USING ORCHESTRATOR

The TCBL experts used this tool, which is part of the TCBL toolkit, in their initial interaction with the Leader of the Business Case (Thrakika Ekkokistiria) to define and plan their intervention and assistance to the Associate Enterprises involved in the Business case.

Initial planning of the implementation of Natural Cotton Business Case

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THE FINAL IMPLEMENTATION SCENARIO HAS BEEN AGREED BETWEEN THE ASSOCIATED ENTERPRISES This scenario, agreed in a meeting held in Athens in February 2017 had the following steps: - The marketing department of Ioanna Kourbela will decide with its designer department the final product(s) which will be selected and produced for the experiment - In parallel the knitting factory (which is a department of the same company – Kourbela) will be informed of the Business Case and will be associated in the selection of the product.

- The knitting factory will discuss the specifications of the required spinned cotton to be provided with the spinning factory and the commercial terms of the transaction - The spinning factory (Varvaressos) will discuss the purchase of the requested quantities of cotton with certified sustainable fibers (CSF) with the ginning factory (Thrakika Ekkokistiria) - The cotton bales will be delivered to the spinning unit and production process will start - The target was to have a sample of a set of final products ready for #2017 TCBL Conference in Athens, in June 2017.

- In parallel the certification body will develop a protocol for the extension of its current scheme of certification of sustainable fibers (CSF) to the knitted cotton produced by Varvaressos out exclusively of the CSF certified cotton balls provided by Thrakika Ekkokistiria; the knitted cotton

by Varvaressos will be also be ECOTEX certified, the knitted products will be accompanied by a full documentation of the tracing of the origin of the cotton used and the certifications attached to this specific cotton and the addition of a specific tag will be considered. A reference to TCBL will be also possible.

- The product will be sold in Kourbela shops and will be also available to be purchased during our next TCBL Conference - A promotion of the product and its story will be made through TCBL - After June, TCBL partners in other countries will be contacted to sale it or to enter in the plot, for the production of their own products at the stage which is the most appropriate for them: -- as a ginning unit, processing European cotton by entering in the CSF certification scheme -- as spinning unit purchasing CSF certified European cotton from Ekkokistiria or another unit producing CSF certified European cotton -- as knitting or weaving unit purchasing cotton from Varvaressos or another spinning mill having ECOTEX certification and producing fabrics out of traceable European cotton -- as dying unit, purchasing knitted or weaved cotton originating from spinning cotton provided

by Varvaressos or another unit knitting the CSF certified cotton produced by Thrakika Ekkokistiria or CSF certified European cotton from another unit PROOF, BY REAL SAMPLES PRODUCTION, OF THE BUSINESS CASE FEASIBILITY HAS BEEN MADE The scenario has worked and the team succeeded to deliver all expected outputs.

First time collaborationÂť obstacles have been faced, as well incompatibilities of orders sizes (minimum sales vs requested quantities for samples production) and some (natural) production planning delays and solved New needs have been identified and directions to solve them have been found (ecofriendly dying, improvement and extension of the traceability system, use of platforms like Thela for developing alternative ways of recognition and certification of the origin, the sustainability and quality of the materials used)

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New TCBL Associate Enterprises (recruited in 2017), informed about the case, verified the interest of the Business Case (as close to 50% declared very interested to participate to it).

Last, but not least, the Business Case, has now tangible results to show, as a sample of 9 garments has been produced and shown in #2017 TCBL Conference in Athens, in June.

Sample of garments produced in the framework of Natural Cotton Business Case

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4.

FIRST RESULTS AND OUTPUTS ACHIEVED

A NEW NATURAL COTTON VALUE CHAIN WITH TCBL ASSOCIATE ENTERPRISES COVERING ALL STEPS HAS BEEN CREATED

The following figure summarises all the inputs used to implement the Business Case in Phase I as well its outputs. As illustrated, it covers the whole cotton value chain. We can add that it is a new value chain, not only because it has been involved in the use of materials it has not used before but also because it accepted a way of processing different by the usual one (isolating the specific material used for the case from others, to guarantee its traceability). It is also new in the sense that none of the members of this value chain had worked with any of the others before.

Core ingredients of the natural cotton business case 2016/2017

A SAMPLE OF CREATIVELY DESIGNED PRODUCTS USING THIS VALUE CHAIN HAS BEEN PRODUCED

Partial view of the sample of the garments produced in Natural Cotton Business Case exposed at #2017 TCBL Conference – Athens – June 2017

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CONTRIBUTION TO TCBL OBJECTIVES TCBL impact target

Cotton business case KPI

Progress at end of Phase 1 (June 2017)

+5% manufacturing capacity

Outputs (type and quantity) produced

100-150kg of yarns 220 peigne ecru from the truck of ginned cotton Nine black and white new sample garments produced

-20% eco footprint

Energy saved (km not travelled; fibres or cloth not imported from outside EU)

1 truck of ginned cotton not sold outside of Greece and the EU but to a fellow Greek business

New embedded services

Number and type of TCBL services used

1 TCBL services used: Strategyzer, Orchestrator

Novel supply network of 1000 organisations

Number of labs, associate enterprises participating

3 Associate Enterprises 1 Associate Lab 1 Adviser

KPIs of the Natural Cotton Business Case

OTHER OUTPUTS THE EXPERIMENT OFFERED ALREADY TO THE PARTICIPANTS NEW BUSINESS CONTACTS FOR DIRECT SALES WITH FEWER OR NO INTERMEDIARIES

Both Thrakika Ekkokistiria and Varvaressos who are exporting most of their production and most of it (in Thrakika Ekkokistiria Case) or a big part of it (Varvaressos) through brokers, have found clients with whom they can have closer and more interesting business relations through which they can follow better the use made of their products and discuss the improvements or adaptations needed by them (and/or by their clients).

The forward (client needs) and backward (providers offer) visibility offered to all the involved TCBL Associate Enterprises is an important benefit for them for planning their future development strategies, in a new, collaborative, way.

THE EXTENSION OF A CERTIFICATION SCHEME FOR COTTON BALES TO YARNS AND TEXTILES HAS BEEN EXPERIMENTED

TCBL LABS, TOOLS AND CASES INTEGRATED INVOLVEMENT HAS STARTED Interest for new dyeing processes has been raised Athens Design Lab users and Fashion Revolution members have been informed of the business case and expressed interest to participate to it in next steps TCBL Tools have been explored (Stategyzer, Orchestrator, BpSquare) or identified for future use (Thela, Sketch) Artistic inspiration has been used for the design of the sample of new garments (opening links with other EU-funded initiatives, like CreativeWear)

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Natural Cotton TCBL Business Cases Textile & Clothing Business Labs

T HE EXISTENCE AND THE QUALITY OF EU NATURAL COTTON AND OF THE PRODUCTS MADE WITH IT HAS BEEN PROMOTED

This was done mainly within TCBL in Phase I. Lots of the members of TCBL Community (and especially designers and end-user products producers) ignored, before being informed about this Business Case, the existence of Natural Cotton of EU origin, which can be of very good quality and is produced with higher sustainability standards.

Most of them are now attracted to use this type of material, as do some members of the Fashion Revolution community, also reached through some contacts and events organized during the Phase I of the Business Case in Greece.

A WIDE INTEREST TO JOIN THE BUSINESS CASE AND ENRICH IT WITH NEW EXPERIMENTS HAS BEEN PROVOKED

This is another (concrete and measurable) expression of the impact of the Business Case.

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5.

NEXT STEPS

The internal evaluators of TCBL have interviewed the actors of the Business Case and summarized in the following figure what can be expected to be done in its Phase II.

From Phase 1 to Phase 2 of the Cotton case

PROMOTE – SYSTEMATISE – DEPLOY THE FIRST EXPERIMENT • • •

•

•

Test the market acceptance of the samples produced in TCBL. Promote the products of each step of the value chain to TCBL Associates located in next steps (and not only in Greece).

Improve and extend certification and production processes (Cooperate with Bacteria dying and eco-friendly cases for solutions) - Adapt the chain to small orders / runs handling.

Describe the Business Models involved (Strategyzer) and the value chain details (Sqetch); systematise (Thela, Orchestrator) involved collaborations, certifications and specifications.

Launch industrial production of the most demanded samples.

BUILD NEW (PARALLEL OR COMPLEMENTARY ) EXPERIMENTS This will be done with some of the other TCBL Associates who have expressed a high interest for the Natural Cotton Business Case.

One of them could address an issue discussed with some fashion designers producing very short runs of their own collections: how we could organize a common sourcing for them of the small quantities of weaved or knitted textiles using exclusively this traceable, EU, sustainable and best quality cotton.

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Natural Cotton TCBL Business Cases Textile & Clothing Business Labs

Other experiments (in complement or integrated with the initial experiment) are planned in Phase II with a major player in Natural Cotton Value Chain (Dontas - Selected Textiles SA http://www.stiafilco.com ) who has joined TCBL as Associate Enterprise, this year.

T RANSPOSE THE BUSINESS CASE TO OTHER EU NATURAL FIBERS The following possible Business Case, which could start with limited experiments, like the Natural Cotton Case did, are already identified and a set of TCBL Associated Enterprises or TCBL partners potentially interested to drive them has been approached.

SILK CASE: INVOLVING A CORE GROUP OF GREEK & ITALIAN TCBL ASSOCIATED ENTERPRISES ‌BUT NOT ONLY! The leader identified for this case is George Tsiakiris (Tsiakiris Silk - http://www.tsiakiris.gr ) , who made a presentation in #2017 TCBL Conference in Athens and had run workshops on how to print silk using batik technic.

To some extend the Business Case has already started with a first experiment, which generated a first transaction of sales of Tsiakiris’ silk to an Slovenian artist, Dusanka Herman, through the intermediation of our TCBL partner, e-Zavod: she was interest to purchase genuine European silk (instead of imported Chinese). Consequently 26 meters of 3 different types of silk has been purchased from TCBL associate member Tsiakiris d.o.o. and shipped to Slovenia. Dusanka Herman will paint the silk, design and produce different products and offer them in her atelier.

In Italy, there is also a silk production, like in Greece, and we have already identified a set of TCBL Associate Entreprises actively involved in its production use and promotion, with whom a full Business Case could be built and who will be contacted soon.

HEMP CASE: TO BE BUILT WITH OUR NEW ROMANIAN PARTNER Currently Romania is engaged in a rebuilding, consolidation and promotion of its T&C value chain based on hemp. Our new TCBL partner from Romania is actively engaged in this field and offered her expertise for building a new Business Case for building a EU-wide Hemp Value Chain.

This possibility will be explored in the Phase II of our Business Case.

CITRUS CASE : TO VALORISE A NEW , PROMISING , PATENT OF ONE ITALIAN TCBL ASSOCIATED ENTERPRISE A team of young people from Southern Italy have patented a very new process for producing textile fibers from citrus (lemon and orange pulp) and have set a small production unit to produce some first quantities of it. They have joined TCBL as an Associate Enterprise but could not be involved in any Business Case or experiment as they were contractually committed to reserve their entire production to one client.

We have the hope to be able to work with them during the coming year to experiment their fibers, promote their process and build with them a new Business Case.

As currently they are in a lot of TCBL countries producing huge amounts of lemon and orange pulp (coming from juices and marmalade production units) which are completely unexploited, the business interest for this new type of fibers could be very high.

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Natural Cotton TCBL Business Cases Textile & Clothing Business Labs

W OOL: IN IT & UK This value chain has received a lot of National and Regional support in UK and Italy. Several TCBL Associate Enterprises are already involved in such national and regional initiatives and this may explain that there has not been, so far, a lot of interest to start something specific in TCBL on this value-chain.

However, it came out of some discussions with some TCBL partners that some Italian companies involved in the Italian Wool value-chain could be interested to increase their purchases of wool of European origin. The fact that any wool-processing has disappeared from Greece, while they are some important quantities of raw wool produced, could be investigated to identify how these quantities (or a part of them of best quality) could be exploited though a cooperation of actors within TCBL.

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Natural Cotton TCBL Business Cases Textile & Clothing Business Labs

DOCUMENT INFORMATION REVISION HISTORY This document is Annex I of TCBL Deliverable 4.2, “T&C Business Systems: Internal Pilots”, of 15.07.2017. Authors: Athanase Contargyris (MIRTEC), Michele Osella (ISMB), Maria Adele Cipolla (eZavod), Michela Bergamin (UCV), Jesse Marsh (Prato), Paolo Guarnieri (Prato), Richard Axe (TCoE), Ruth Farrell (TCoE), Darko Fercej (eZavod), Ana Sampaio (Sanjotec), Luca Leonarsi (ARCA), and Dieter Stellmach (DITF). This Annex in particular is written by Thanos Contargyris.

REVISION Version 1 Version 2

DATE 08.07.2017 15.07.2017

AUTHOR Thanos Contargyris Jesse Marsh

ORGANISATION

DESCRIPTION

MIRTEC Prato

Draft for review Layout and minor adjustments for publications

STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY This deliverable contains original unpublished work except where clearly indicated otherwise.

Acknowledgement of previously published material and of the work of others has been made through appropriate citation, quotation or both.

COPYRIGHT This work is licensed by the TCBL Consortium under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, 2015-2016. For details, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ The TCBL Consortium, consisting of: Municipality of Prato (PRATO) Italy; German Institutes for Textile and Fiber Research - Center for Management Research (DITF) Germany; Istituto Superiore Mario Boella (ISMB) Italy; Skillaware (SKILL) Italy; The Oxford Brookes University (OBU) UK; imec (IMEC) Belgium; Tavistock Institute (TAVI) UK; Materials Industrial Research & Technology Center S.A. (MIRTEC) Greece; Waag Society (WAAG) Netherlands; Huddersfield & District Textile Training Company Ltd (TCOE) UK; eZavod (eZAVOD) Slovenia; Consorzio Arca (ARCA) Italy; Unioncamere del Veneto (UCV) Italy; Hellenic Clothing Industry Association (HCIA) Greece; Sanjotec - Centro Empresarial e Tecnológico (SANJO) Portugal; Clear Communication Associates Ltd (CCA) UK.

DISCLAIMER All information included in this document is subject to change without notice. The Members of the TCBL Consortium make no warranty of any kind with regard to this document, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The Members of the TCBL Consortium shall not be held liable for errors contained herein or direct, indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages in connection with the furnishing, performance, or use of this material.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The TCBL project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Programme for research, technology development, and innovation under Grant Agreement n.646133.

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