Within the context of the Sustainability Pledge initiative from the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), Haelixa, a startup from Kemptthal in the canton of Zurich, is enabling the traceability of high-quality Egyptian cotton, which is used to make premium shirts, among other things. According to a press release, Haelixa is part of the expert group at UNECE that develops such sustainability recommendations to determine traceability criteria and later develop these into standards.
Haelixa, a spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH), has developed a DNA-based tracer that can be used to mark products without labels or certificates. According to the press release, the DNA marker was applied to cotton as a fine spray in the Egyptian industrial city of Borg El Arab. This was then used by Weba, a company based in Appenzell, to produce quality fabrics. Once Haelixa’s DNA marker has been applied to the fibers, it remains embedded in the material and withstands industrial processing. This ensures traceability from the source to the finished item of clothing. The marked fabric was used to produce Hugo Boss cotton shirts.
Gediminas Mikutis, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Co-Founder of Haelixa, commented: “In cases like this, where the material is of an extremely high quality and the product is transported from one institute to another for high-grade processing, additional physical traceability is of vital importance in order to ensure that information on the origin, quality, and processing can be confirmed.”