News

Corporate Update

Archroma ORTA Give Denim A Circular Makeover

• By  Textile Excellence
• April 16, 2026

At Kingpins Amsterdam, a quiet but powerful shift in denim manufacturing took centre stage. Premium Turkish mill Orta Anadolu, under its ORTA brand, has teamed up with Archroma to launch a denim collection dyed not with conventional chemicals, but with waste wool.

The innovation lies in Archroma’s FiberColors® dyes, engineered using at least 50% pre-consumer wool waste - fleeces that would otherwise be discarded at a cost to sheep farmers. The result: a breakthrough that replaces petroleum-based inputs without compromising performance, water usage or energy efficiency. Importantly, the dyes match conventional sulfur dyes in colour fastness and are GOTS-approved, making them commercially viable.

Following trials in late 2025, ORTA has brought three shades into production - DIRESUL® FIBER-TEAK, DIRESUL® FIBER-SLATE and DIRESUL® FIBER-GRAPHITE - marking the first real step toward scaling circular dye chemistry in premium denim.

FiberColors® builds directly on the success of our EarthColors® platform, which has now been adopted by more than 50 global brands and helped us upcycle over 60 tons of plant residue from the herbal and pharmaceutical industries. With FiberColors®, we identified wool waste as another significant stream that circular chemistry could transform, giving brands a compelling and fully traceable sustainability story. ORTA’s decision to bring this into commercial denim production is exactly the kind of partnership that proves these technologies are ready to scale. - Julio Perales, Technical & Product Segment Manager Denim, Archroma