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The Sustainability Map, an initiative by IAPMEI and RDP (public radio) to promote sustainable practices, visited Tintex to learn about innovative ways of dyeing with organic products. They are based on raw materials such as herbs, shrubs and trees, such as thyme and chestnut bark powder, but also fish skin, pine bark, coffee waste, grapes and onions.
Pedro Silva, in charge of the guided tour during the programme, compared the extraction of the thyme colourant to the process of making tea: ‘we extract the colourant with boiling water,’ he shares, and the result is a bright yellow. ‘Dyeing is an ancient technique, but at Tintex we have a patent for the area of dyeing with plant extracts, so I don’t think it’s the same as what other companies might be doing,’ he said, pointing out that the current priorities are colour uniformity, fastness to washing and light. The company from Vila Nova de Cerveira is still working on finding alternatives to animal skin.
The topic of conversation in the episode was also the InVinoTex project, created in partnership with Quinta do Soalheiro, which aims to reuse grape waste. ‘We’re currently making optimisations to find out which materials are the most resistant and which pay off in terms of price,’ he said, while leaving marketing to come soon.
Tintex mentioned other efforts towards sustainability, including the renovation of the machine park in 2017, which led to a water reduction of around 35 per cent. A system was also installed to recover energy in gas streams. With a production of 800 tonnes of knitwear a year, Tintex had a turnover of 12 million in 2023.