The new Horizon Europe project MELANGE has been launched to transform colouration practices in the European interior textile industry. The project moves colour design from the end to the beginning of the manufacturing process. As part of a consortium of nine partners led by Aalto University, Vanelli Textile will lead the industrial fabric production trials.
Conventionally, colour is applied at the end of the manufacturing process to achieve uniformity, which comes at a high cost in water, energy, and chemicals. MELANGE aims to cut water and chemical use by up to 50% compared with conventional processes by advancing low-impact fibre-stage colouration technologies.
Vanelli Textile will weave fabrics from fibre-stage coloured yarns at a commercial scale, entirely without a dye bath. Sadi Cem Türkün, Strategy & Sustainability Director of Vanelli Textile, highlights their mission: “Our role is to take that question to the industrial loom: to weave and finish fabrics from MELANGE yarns, to trace every step, and to show what colour variation looks like when it is a design effect rather than a defect".