WTiN Is Trialing a Digital Fiber Pricing Platform
Fiber prices are critical to the textile industry’s sustainability goals and overall success. They influence decisions relevant to supply chain choices, cost management and market development. Staying on top of price fluctuations is key to remaining competitive.
The World Textile Information Network (WTiN) wants to make this process easier. Last week it released Fibre Hub, an interactive tool providing fiber pricing data for both conventional and emerging next-gen materials.
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While the UK-based B2B textile manufacturing intelligence and insights provider has long provided fiber and ingredient pricing data to the industry, it’s traditionally been done through PDFs, which aren’t as user-friendly as an interactive platform. Now, that information will be available through the new tool, where users can filter results by currency, supply chain, segment, variant and data range.
On top of the existing data for fibers like polyester and cotton and specialty fibers such as yak and mohair, Fibre Hub will also cover hemp, flax, jute, cupro and man-made cellulosic fibers like lyocell, according to Mark Javis, manager director at WTiN.
“Updated with new price data on a weekly basis, the Fibre Hub on WTiN.com allows users to examine trends and pricing of fibers in a variety of supply chains and assess key markets,” Javis said.
Fibre Hub will also give users access to CO2e data for fiber types and data analytics tools to assist users in research and development, product development and marketing. It’s working with Peftrust, which creates environmental footprint assessments for clothing, footwear and accessories brands, to provide land and water usage data as well.
“Our upcoming partnership with Peftrust will enable our users to be more informed on the decisions they make within their product development,” Javis said. “While we do not anticipate this to replace life cycle assessment analysis, it is an important complimentary offering to those requiring surface level information on environmental footprint.”
Based in northeastern France, Peftrust is a fashion-focused Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that allows users to monitor their products’ entire lifecycle by integrating with traceability tools, coordinating with PLM systems and consolidating supplier data through API integrations. The environmental compliance solution, developed by L’Empreinte, consists of four modules (assess, substantiate, eco-design and collaborate) and provides the apparel and footwear industry with the tools needed to collect and measure environmental data using the transparent method recognized by the European Union (EU): the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) methodology. The PEF method was developed by the European Commission’s Joint Research Center (JRC) as part of the Single Market for Green Products (SMGP) initiative.
“Peftrust gives brands the key to consistently measure and compare the environmental footprint of apparel and footwear products, substantiating green claims,” Laurent Bocahut, co-founder and CEO of Peftrust, said. “With WTiN’s global reach, we look forward to expanding our work with key brands and retailers across the global supply chain.”
Fibre Hub is currently in beta testing, available to select WTiN members.
WTiN serves more than 75,000 members—from raw material and textile manufacturers to global brands including Puma and Nike—and provides them with the tools and content needed to track key trends throughout the textile manufacturing industry.
