Tracking of Textiles

Verifying the origin of textiles is one of Agroisolab's latest fields of work, which was launched in 2022.

Although market expectations are enormous due to the China / Xinjang problem, this issue of origin verification is extremely complex and the analytical possibilities are limited.

This is due to the large number of possible mixtures of yarns of different origins in the textile. Further processing of textiles as washing, bleaching, dyeing and possible further finishing of textiles have influences on the origin signatures.

Accordingly, the use of trace elements is hardly expedient; washing alone must lead to a change in the trace element pattern and often the genetic information which can be used as a secondary origin information is destroyed.

The stable isotope signature, on the other hand, is much more robust, as the isotope pattern is analysed directly in the basic structure of the textiles, in the cellulose.

However, it has always been Agroisolab's company policy to test the possibilities in a “proof of concept” so that the necessary IP exists to be able to correctly classify the signatures of origin (This is often neglected by competitor laboratories and should therefore always be questioned by customers).

For this reason, the project: “Textile-Tracker” has been started beforehand, so that the processing effect could be verified in an extensive study and methods could be developed to reduce the processing influences to a minimum.

Therefore, it could be concluded, that only three stable isotopes are worth to be analysed.

A unique selling point today is that Agrosiolab has introduced the complete nitration of textile cellulose so that the covalently bound hydrogen in the cellulose can be measured as well.

This is extremely stable and cannot be altered by external influences.

Accordingly, Agroisolab is the only laboratory today that uses 4 isotope patterns in textiles.

Nevertheless, it has always to be considered that the analysis of textiles is still a hugh challenge as overlapping between countries has always to be taken into account and normally only the origin signature of the dominated country cellulose could be evaluated.

Interested? You will get more information in our textile guidelines.