Unifi expands Repreve offerings with new filament yarn, insulation

Unifi Inc., Greensboro, North Carolina, has launched two products it says will make its circular Repreve offering the largest portfolio of regenerated performance polyester in the world.

Powered by the company’s proprietary Textile Takeback process, Unifi will offer white-dyeable filament yarn and a new insulation material, ThermaLoop, representing a leap forward in scalable textile-to-textile recycling.

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“Polyester is the most widely utilized fiber on the planet, and it’s time for transformative change,” Unifi CEO Eddie Ingle says. “Textile brands can now create solutions with the entire product lifecycle in mind and work towards achieving their 2030 environmentally preferred materials targets. Our goal is to provide the best-in-class sustainable products that eliminate the need for virgin materials and reduce carbon emissions.”

Unifi says the products, made from 100 percent-recycled-polyester feedstock and with at least 50 percent textile scrap, achieve “virgin-quality” standards.

The company's Textile Takeback process recycles both global postindustrial and postconsumer textile scrap into new materials using proprietary technologies. Additionally, Unifi says it also will partner with global brands to take back their materials and keep them in circulation longer.

With widespread versatility across industries, applications and colorways, Unifi's new Repreve filament yarn is a white, dyeable, high-performance polyester designed for the most critical applications. The Repreve polyester line, which also includes black filament yarn and black and white staple fiber, contains FiberPrint tracer technology, meaning that all products can gain U-Trust certification.

The company says ThermaLoop insulation, available in down-like fiber, fiberball and padding, offers performance, recovery and thermal efficiency. The padding is engineered with Repreve low-melt fiber, which the company calls a pioneering innovation that enables the production of 100 percent-recycled synthetic padding. The company says ThermaLoop’s launch in black insulation “showcases the wide variety of textile waste that can be utilized as feedstock.”

Unifi says the two products are now both available globally and can be integrated into existing supply chains without disruption.

“This commercial scalability tackles a key challenge for polyester-reliant industries, particularly fashion brands, which have long sought to create circular apparel to meet sustainability goals,” the company says. “These products underpin Unifi’s goal to recycled 1.5 billion T-shirts’ worth of textile waste by fiscal year 2030.”

Unifi will be stationed at hall 4.1-E72 at the upcoming Intertextile Apparel Fabrics Shanghai, Aug. 27-29 at the National Exhibition and Convention Center. More information on the company’s Textile Takeback program can be found here.