Spandex, which makes up 65% of a swimsuit, Shopping for a swimsuit? Try a recycled one

Is hard to recycle

In the first half of the year, before the spectre of the delta variant arose, consumers were in a liberated mood. Along with airline tickets and high heels, swimsuits became musthaves for shoppers eager to escape quarantine. Globally, consumers spent $2.7 billion on swimwear in the first half of 2021-a 19 per cent jump from the same period in 2019, according to industry analysts at NPD Group.

For decades now, most swimsuits have been made with Spandex, which was invented by materials scientists at DuPont in 1959 as a lighter, more breathable alternative to rubber.

The petroleum-based material quickly became standard in the apparel industry, and in 1972, Speedo became the first company to sell Spandex swimwear. As of 2017, polyester and Spandex make up about 65 per cent of the fabrics used in the swimwear market, according to Allied Market

Research.

As new bikinis, onepieces, and briefs rotate into people's wardrobes, the worn-out ones typically wind up in landfills. "Spandex is a very difficult material to recycle," says Shannon Bergstrom, sustainability brand manager at Recycle Track Systems. The synthetic fibres are too short for mechanical processes to sort, and no effective chemical methods yet exist to recover the used material. Consumers can always donate or resell used suits, but there's no guarantee anyone will buy them, even if they're new with tags. "I'm hopeful that companies will pick up the bill to create solutions," Bergstrom adds.

Some are trying. The Lycra Company's EcoMade line includes fibres drawn from pre-consumer Spandex scraps as well as blends of recycled polyethylene terephthalate, a common plastic. Speedo sells souped-up performance suits in chlorine-resistant Spandex and Lycra's Xtra Life fibre, which promises to last longer than conventional fibres, thereby creating less waste. Perhaps the most popular among boutique and fashion-oriented swimwear lines is Econyl, made by the decade-old Aquafil, which recovers fishing nets from oceans and industrial carpets from landfills to spin into yarn.

"Swimwear is our biggest challenge," says Dana Davis, head of sustainability at the eco-conscious brand Mara Hoffman. The company designs its suits with Econyl and Repreve, a performance fibre made from recycled materials such as plastic bottles, and will soon work with another recycled nylon called QNova.

Kolkata, Aug. 8: B. K. Birla Group company Kesoram Industries is likely to offer a hefty discount of 30 per cent or more from market price in the proposed upcoming rights offer to reward the shareholders, company sources said.

Kesoram had tweaked its fundraising plan by dropping a preferential allotment of shares to a promoter group company at Rs 100 crore at a price of Rs 100 per share and a rights offer worth Rs 200 crore.

The company has now decided to drop the preferential issue to promoters and instead go for Rs 400 crore rights offer in a single shot in the overall Rs 500-600 crore raising plan to make Rs 1,900 crore debt from PE funds serviceable.

"The rights offer will be made attractive to shareholders. It will be not less than 30 per cent discount to the ruling price otherwise it will not be remunerative to retail shareholders," company sources told PTI.

"After receiving feedback from shareholders of the company, who desired to participate in a rights issue, we decided to cancel the preferential allotment and go for a larger rights offer," the sources said.

On Friday, Kesoram closed at Rs 92.55 per share of Rs 10 each.

Kesoram board will meeting on August 12 ratify the issue plan.

Retail shareholders were deprived of rewards for a long time by the company. Last dividend paid was back in 2013.

While in the preferential issue plan to the promoter, only Rs 25 crore was supposed to come upfront, with the rest would have come after 18 months. The promoter shareholders include Kumar Mangalam Birla, the grandson of B K Birla. be to