Portuguese textile specialist Tintex Textiles constantly offers new materials that are eco-friendly and high-performance. Tintex Textiles, founded by its CEO, Mario Jorge Silva, in 1998, is a Portuguese textile company that develops advanced finishes and treatments added to sustainable jersey fabrics used by contemporary fashion, athleisure, sports and lingerie brands, among others.
The company is owned and managed by Silva together with his son Ricardo, head of operations, and Ricardo’s wife, Ana Silva Tavares, head of sustainability, and celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2018. It is constantly involved in different R&D projects aimed at finding new responsible solutions.
Some of its most recent achievements include developing Weme fabrics made with a mix of new generation fibers that are environmentally friendly and enhance free movement. The fabrics use fibers such as Refibra by Lenzing, Q-Nova by Fulgar and the GRS certified premium stretch Roica. Some of this collection's fabrics have soothing and anti-inflammatory effects thanks to the inclusion of zinc oxide.
Also innovative is the Colorau line of responsibly colored fabrics in cotton, Lyocell and wool, with anti-microbial properties using compounds of natural origins such as thyme, boldo, peppermint, chestnut and gambier, and avoiding the use of salt. It also recently released Textbion, a material that uses a textile yarn that can be processed as other conventional synthetic fibers, though this polymer is obtained from a renewable source.
Tintex has also developed Naturally Clean, a non-aggressive finishing that enhances the natural beauty of cotton and cellulosic fibers, while it guarantees clean surfaces, vivid colors, smooth hand feel and long-lasting materials.
Tintex’s involvement in these different projects happened thanks to its constant collaboration and networking with technological centers, universities, knowledge centers and external research centers including CENTI (Centre for Nanotechnology and Smart Materials the Institute for New Technologies) and CITEVE (an institution for the promotion of Innovation and Technological Development).
Since its early days it has achieved recognition for its commitment. In 1999 it was granted with its first Oeko-Tex certification that acknowledged that the products it used were not toxic. In 2000 it introduced Lyocell fibers and started dyeing them, when no one had tried that before. Starting from 2005 it introduced products made with Ingeo (corn-based fiber), soy and bamboo fibers and in 2018, it became Bluesign certified. It is now taking part of the Make Fashion Circular initiative by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. It is a participant of the United Nations Global Compact, a platform for the development of responsible business practices, among many initiatives.
Tintex registered €11.3 million in sales in 2018. It has the productive capacity to dye 120 tons of fabrics per month and offers two collections of new materials per year. “We offer maximum 50 articles per collection but we test and study more than 500 developments per year,” says Ana Silva. “Also when choosing materials we are very careful. We don’t use conventional cotton, but organic cotton, Ecotec by Marchi & Fildi, a special quality of recycled cotton, and other top qualities like Supima. We always check all of our processes, ingredients and materials in order to guarantee they are not harmful for the wearer and are as sustainable as possible. Our mission is to work and challenge ourselves every day as a real change can only start from a mindset change–which is clearly the most difficult thing for a company, but definitely the most important asset for a long-term success.”
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