FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Mumbai Textile Mill Debuts SUPRAUNO® Low-Water Dyeing Line, Slashing Process Water 90 %
Closed-loop super-critical CO₂ system moves from pilot to 24-ton-per-day commercial production; mill targets 1 billion L annual water savings
Mumbai, India – 21 November 2025
Arvind Limited’s Santej mill today formally launched the first industrial-scale SUPRAUNO® low-water dyeing range, a patented super-critical carbon-dioxide (scCO₂) process that colours cotton, polyester and blends without conventional water baths. The line, developed with equipment partner Deven Supercriticals and funded in part by Swedish retailer H&M, is now dyeing 24 tonnes of fabric per day—enough capacity to supply 12 million garments annually while using 90 % less water, 67 % less energy and 90 % fewer auxiliary chemicals than the mill’s legacy jet-dyeing equipment.
The announcement comes as global apparel brands face mounting pressure to curb the sector’s water footprint; textile dyeing consumes an estimated 5.8 trillion litres of water each year and accounts for 17–20 % of industrial water pollution, according to the World Bank.
“Scalability has always been the final hurdle for waterless dyeing,” said Vikram Oza, Chief Sustainability Officer at Arvind. “By integrating SUPRAUNO® beams directly into our existing stenter frames, we skipped the need for entirely new buildings and still quadrupled throughput in 14 months.”
Independent verification by the Ahmedabad Textile Industry’s Research Association (ATIRA) shows the line achieves >98 % dye utilisation and produces no liquid effluent; 96 % of the CO₂ is reclaimed and recycled in a closed loop. A life-cycle screening prepared for the project estimates 1.9 kg CO₂-e less impact per kilogram of fabric compared with conventional exhaust dyeing, equivalent to taking roughly 1,200 passenger cars off the road each year .
Market uptake is accelerating. H&M has already booked 60 % of the line’s 2026 capacity for recycled-polyester blends, while German outdoor brand Vaude will begin pilot orders of high-performance nylon in Q-1. Global demand for low-impact dyeing is projected to grow at 12 % CAGR, reaching USD 3.9 billion by 2030, according to Textile Exchange’s 2025 Market Snapshot.
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“Water risk is business risk,” said Punit Lalbhai, Executive Director of Arvind Limited. “Our Santur dyehouse used to draw 4 million litres of groundwater every week. With SUPRAUNO® we have cut that to 400,000 litres and still raised output. This is not a pilot—it is mass production, and it is profitable from day one.”
The technology is fibre-agnostic: reactive dyes for cotton, disperse dyes for polyester and acid dyes for nylon all perform in the same pressurised vessel, eliminating the two-bath sequences normally required for cotton-polyester blends and shortening batch cycles to 90 minutes, 50 % faster than traditional methods. Colour-fastness grades (ISO 105) for wash, light and perspiration all test at 4–5, meeting major-brand quality standards.
Arvind says it will licence the process to three competitor mills in Tamil Nadu and Gujarat next year under a technology-transfer agreement backed by the India Sustainable Fashion CSR Fund. The company is also exploring on-site solar steam to push the carbon saving toward 70 % and aims to replicate the line at its 110-acre Naroda complex by 2027.
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