Published 04 June 2019 • Inter IKEA newsroom

Spinning better textiles with wood pulp

At IKEA we love cotton, but we also know that alternatives need to be implemented in the range. How can IKEA provide textiles with good sustainability at an attractive cost level to the many people? One way is to spin wood pulp into textile fibres.

Today textile sourcing is heavily dependent on virgin materials and a large part is fossil based. We know that it is important to diversify the use of textile material from both a sustainability, availability and cost perspective. Cotton production will not be able to meet the world’s demand for fibre in the future.

To reduce the dependency on cotton and fossil based fibres, and to push the development of future alternative fibres, IKEA together with H&M group and innovator Lars Stigsson created the joint venture TreeToTextile in 2014. Four years later, in 2018, Stora Enso joined. The aim is to develop and industrialize a new low-cost fibre based on cellulose from wood.

The process of TreeToTextile takes renewable forest raw material and regenerates the cellulose into a textile fiber by spinning the wood pulp. This production process uses less chemicals, allowing for a much more sustainable and cost-efficient process compared to conventional technologies and fibres. Compared to cellulose-based traditional viscose, TreeToTextile will have no sulphur emissions during production. The water and the chemicals used are recycled and reused, and the cellulose raw material will come from responsibly managed forests.