ARISE IIP, a pan-African developer and operator of industrial parks, and FibreTrace, a provider of traceable fiber technology, announced a new pilot program on Monday enabling spinner-to-garment traceability for ARISE IIP’s Republic of Benin spinning facilities at the Glo-Djigbé Industrial Zone (GDIZ).
The partnership between FibreTrace and ARISE IIP will bring full traceability to vertically integrated mills in Benin to trace, verify and audit the lifecycle of their garments from spinning mills to stores, sharing the journey of Benin premium cotton with end consumers.
“ARISE IIP will now be able to guarantee the sustainability of the premium cotton transformed on its industrial platforms across Africa thanks to the technology deployed by FibreTrace,” Gagan Gupta, founder and CEO of ARISE IIP, said.
The partnership aims to position Benin at the forefront of textile innovation and technology, improving visibility, resilience, securing economic competitiveness, and creating a thriving value chain for African agriculture as the country is expected to yield 98,000 tons of lint cotton processing capacity per annum by the end of 2023.
Smallholder farmers are estimated to produce around 30 percent of total crop output globally, making them the foundation of global agriculture and the food sector. The program will make its debut in the Fall of 2022 when GDIZ spinning, fabric and garment production facilities are anticipated to start operations.
It is anticipated that FibreTrace technology will be adopted at scale across all textile processing sites and facilities in Benin and across the African sub-continent. The technology will provide transparency and true custody of supply chain solutions for brands and suppliers across the globe working with African manufacturers and supporting the growth of best practices in agriculture on the continent.
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To guarantee the traceability of the cotton, FibreTrace embeds luminescent pigments on the fiber at the spinning mill. The pigments, indestructible throughout the entire textile processing cycle, can be read and tracked at every stage of the supply chain and each audit is recorded on the blockchain, making the information secured, accessible and irrefutable.
“We’re truly excited about this partnership because it is the first step in making African grown cotton more visible to the global textile industry, and affords these farmers, who dedicate their land and livelihoods to growing this fiber, the opportunity to take a more prevalent role,” FibreTrace CEO Shannon Mercer said. “We look forward to the day that the primary impact data from African farmers is combined with traceability to showcase Africa’s contribution to a better future for the textile industry.”