H&M Group expands partnership with TextileGenesis

Following a pilot in 2019-20 and after winning H&M Foundation’s Global Change Award, TextileGenesis’ traceability technology has evolved into several scaled pilots. Their textile traceability platform, using blockchain technology, provides a highly valuable solution to enabling improved supply chain traceability and transparency. We are now happy to announce that we will start rolling out TextileGenesis for all man-made celullosics and recycled polyester in a phase-by-phase approach throughout 2022.

"H&M Group believe that supply chain traceability and transparency should go hand-in-hand to create greater accountability for where materials and products come from, and to drive positive change in the fashion industry. Moreover, we believe that we can have greater impact by working together within and across industries to come up with shared solutions; combining technologies and shared-industry databases can help increase supply chain traceability."

Merel Krebbers, Product owner Fiber to Product Traceability, H&M Group

At H&M Group, traceability is a topic of great importance. To advance our work in this area we have been initiating several traceability pilots and programmes over the past years in order to identify and test the most suitable solutions. We believe that it is important to have the right tools and systems that work for the industry at large.

The TextileGenesis™ collaboration is a key initiative in H&M Group´s traceability journey, it is an exciting initiative not just for us, but for the retail industry at large. This current roll-out will enable us to ensure a high level of traceability for a significant portion of our material base, up to 20% by volume of material base from fiber through to final product on the innovative digital platform – with the intention to keep increasing it next year.  In our scaled pilots in 2021, we traced more than 1.5 million garments and with the current roll out, by the end of 2022 we aim for over 200 million.

As supply chains are complex and dynamic, suppliers and supply chain engagement are crucial in making this roll-out successful. In practice, the scaled pilots of last year and this year’s roll-out of TextileGenesisTM to our supply chain for man-made cellulosics and recycled polyester has meant we have onboarded and trained hundreds of suppliers across several countries.  We are glad to see that we have had active supplier engagement but also great collaboration across the industry.

"H&M Group is at the cutting-edge of traceability in the fashion industry and has continuously challenged us to deliver traceability at scale. Our joint ambition to track several hundred million units from fiber-to-retail marks a major milestone.  It moves the entire industry forward in realising scalable supply chain traceability."

Amit Gautam, Founder & CEO, TextileGenesis™