Interview with Sven Ghyselinck

We have developed activewear together with Acabada Active. CBD-infused clothing programmes are currently in pre-collection stage with approximately 10 brands. The best known at this stage is Acabada Active as it is already selling products in the New York consumer market. Others are related to socks, recovery wear, sleepwear, shirts, denim, etc and so, there is a lot of interest from the clothing side. From home textile brands, we do get a lot of positive reactions. During New York Market Week recently, 15 brands have been showing R-Vital CBD-infused products to the US retail community.

Currently, the strongest market demand is in North America (with the US being the dominant consumer market for CBD products), but several European countries are increasingly speeding up demand and interest.

We believe this is still very early days of the CBD market. The market in general is still very much in a growth phase. Several analysts indicate the market will grow to a $15-billion one.

CBD-infused textile products are currently a new approach in the CBD arena, but surely it will find increasingly its niche in this space. We have seen similar market adoptions with skincare for example, where first cosmetics were (and still are) the leading industry supplier, but where textile solutions find increasingly their spot.

Devan is active in the entire textile range. From clothing to bedding (mattress and bed accessories), textiles for aviation, train, automotive, home textiles (curtains, carpets, upholstery), and finish with hygiene non-woven solutions.

From a brand perspective the market is still dominated by the United States and the European Union, with Southeast Asian and Chinese brands rapidly coming up. From a textile application point of view, clearly there is an upsurge in activity in SE Asia following US-China trade issues.

For many years-even before it became a marketing must to present you as green-Devan has been working on durable and sustainable solutions. Even in a category like flame retardants, we have been a leader in halogen-free and antimony-free solutions; recently we have even introduced a 94 per cent bio-sourced flame retardants.

Everything that we do, we focus not only on the impact of our solutions on the consumer (during wear or wash), but we also genuinely care about the waste streams of the mills. Often those are the ones enduring far more environmental issues than the consumer. A good example is that despite the market demanding metal-based anti-microbials, we have always carried our range of metal-free anti-microbials. Not only are these not leaching for the consumer, but also the waste treatment for the mills is far easier and non-hazardous.