Orta Anadolu, a Turkish denim specialist which counts brands such as Gap, Uniqlo and Levi’s among its customers, has launched ‘Vegan Denim’, a collection of naturally dyed denim, which it says can be produced on an industrial scale. Using a new ‘patented dyeing process’, the company says, it has produced good colour density and shade consistency for a range of indigo and natural denim shades without the need for metal-based mordants.

Orta Anadolu further claims to have cracked the age-old problem of using natural dyes on an industrial scale to produce reproducible denim qualities acceptable to big retailers and brands. The new ‘Vegan Denim’ uses less water, less energy and fewer chemicals than conventional denim dyeing methods. The company has developed this new process with an EU grant to produce vegetable dyes for denim that has solved the problem of dye affinity and shade consistency on an industrial scale.

The new process is not just for dyeing with natural indigo, according to Ozaydin, but also for dyeing jean with other natural dyestuffs from extracts of plants such as madder (reds), green and black tea and the shells of walnuts for natural soft tones.

The new process is applicable to three denim dyeing techniques. Traditional rope dyeing denim, over dyeing denim fabrics too are using the Orta ‘i-Core’ method to coat cotton fabrics with a mixture of natural indigo and an ‘eco-friendly’ resin finish supplied by Garmon Chemicals of Italy.