In South Carolina, Tidal Vision is building a production plant to manufacture textile treatments made from chitosan, a seafood industry byproduct from the shells of crabs and shrimp.
Dubbed Tidal-Tex, the treatment is a drop-in replacement for the harmful chemicals often used in current textile treatments.
“Our proprietary lower-cost chitosan technology, combined with lower freight costs from our new facility, allows us to deliver our Tidal-Tex product line to textile manufacturers at a price point less than half of many heavy metal antimicrobials… This is the first time that fiber, yarn, and textile manufacturers have had an environmentally friendly option at a lower cost with equivalent or better performance,” said Kari Ingalls, director of textile business development at Tidal Vision.
The facility will be built at Leigh Fiber’s 1,000,000-sq.-ft headquarters “to provide for economies of scale in the heart of the U.S. textile industry.”