Baking up deep hues, France's Ever Dye raises €3.4 million

Category: DYES AND CHEMICALS

Country: France

As fashion houses seek low emissions production methods, Ever Dye aims to become the sustainable dyeing standard for the global textile industry.

By Callum Cyrus
01 February 2023

Taking inspiration from the Parisian artisan landscape, Ever Dye is working on dye products sans chemical agents to radically cut down on textiles carbon emissions.

To get its product out the door Ever Dye just raised €3.4 million in seed funds, making a big impression with the Helsinki seed investor Maki.vc, Paris-based VC Asterion Ventures and international talent investor Entrepreneur First.

The round, co-led by Maki.vc and Asterion, also includes non-equity funding from a French investment bank.

The proceeds should enable Ever Dye to scale up commercialisation of sustainable dyes, launching its first industrial-scale production line but also trebling the size of its team in the next two years.

Already Ever Dye is courting business from the sizeable Parisian fashion ecosystem, notably working alongside French designer brand Petit Bateau.

Ever Dye's vegetal waste upcycling process is used to yield the bio-sourced pigments. It's claimed each pigment can dye materials in half an hour, and at room temperature, good news given that dye autoclaves can reach 130 degrees Celsius. The upshot — a 15x reduction in energy usage.

More often than not, the energy used to run textile mills comes from natural gas, coal or oil, so anything to limit consumption should help a lot.

Dyeing textiles causes an astonishing 52% of the industry's GHG emissions, with fast fashion long cited by UN climate officials as among global priorities. According to the World Bank, dyeing textiles is also directly responsible for roughly 20% of water pollution globally.

Ever Dye's founding team Illan Palacci and Amira Erokh were acquainted in a sojourn with Entrepreneur First's 3-month talent networking initiative, which is also backing this seed round.

Early product feedback is promising, though the formal launch won't come until later this year. Ever Dye was victorious in a recent industry award programme, Adnam's Innovation Prize, and was also selected to join sustainable fashion initiative Fashion for Good.

Thierry Scaglia, Petit Bateau's innovation fabrics director, said Ever Dye's vegetal upcycling tech was the perfect solution as it seeks sustainable production modes for the future.

Scaglia says: "Innovation has always been at the heart of Petit Bateau's DNA, and Ever Dye fits perfectly with the current challenges of transforming clothing manufacturing processes.

"Our group is committed to a major decarbonization plan, and the future of textile production includes new resource-saving solutions like the one developed by Ever Dye."

Speaking from Maki.vc's side of the deal, investment partner Paavo Räisänen, whose remit includes new materials as well as IoT, commented: "Fashion is one of the industries most ripe for disruption, and Ever Dye’s technology brings a long-awaited, more sustainable solution to dyeing fabrics.

"Ever Dye’s solution ticks all the boxes: it is energy efficient and uses sustainable raw materials and can even be applied to existing dyeing infra. 

"No wonder the team has already won over strong industry partners from luxury to high-street fashion brands.”

Courtesy: https://tech.eu/2023/02/01/baking-up-some-deep-hues-french/