Rodinia Generation, a Copenhagen-based tech startup, has secured €3 million in funding from the Danish Export and Investment Fund (EIFO) and Climentum Capital. The company specializes in revolutionizing the fashion industry by introducing a manufacturing method that significantly reduces carbon emissions and water usage in garment production. Rodinia plans to use the funding to expand its European production and eventually enter global markets, aiming to eliminate overproduction of clothes by producing them in quantities that match demand, using automated microfactories that are cost-effective and environmentally friendly.
The fashion and textile industry is responsible for 8% of global CO2 emissions. While the fashion industry faces increasing sustainability demands, adapting proves challenging. Much is due to the way it is set up. Fashion companies send designs to low-cost manufacturing countries, where they are mass-produced, using vast amounts of water, toxic chemicals and dyes, without knowing if the garment will ever sell. Furthermore, because unit costs are low but shipping is slow, manufacturers are incentivised to overproduce. Production processes are low-tech and, although continuously improving, have remained principally the same since the invention of the power loom during the Industrial Revolution.
Rodinia’s microfactories reduce water consumption to zero and lower the product carbon footprint by 40%
Rodinia has developed both in-house hardware and software to run a network of automated microfactories that make clothes exactly when they’re needed, near the customer, and only in the amounts that people buy.
“It should be possible only to make clothes when they are actually bought, without having to transport them from one end of the planet to the other while causing all sorts of damage to people and the environment along the way,” says Rodinia’s founder and CEO Trine Young, before adding, “Our first-of-its-kind microfactory has been running in Copenhagen since 2021. We source quality textiles which we print, cure and cut in an automated process without any water or toxic chemicals. Then we have the garments sewn locally.”
Rodinia addresses the most polluting processes within the fashion supply chain: dyeing and finishing, i.e. how colour and other chemicals are applied to fabric, and manufacturing, i.e. the actual sewing of garments.
Traditional garment factories need a footprint of 2,000 sqm and use nearly 150 million litres of water to produce 700,000 garments. One of Rodinia’s microfactories can produce the same output while taking up just 200 sqm and using zero litres of water.
Garment designs can be produced in less than two weeks, even in as little as 48 hours, eliminating the need to overproduce to ensure supply – thereby helping reduce the nearly 50 billion unsold garments annually, which costs the fashion and textiles industry EUR 188 billion. “Today, it takes nine months from design to sale. With our microfactories, we can shorten the production process allowing clothing brands to quickly adapt their products to trends – and potentially even sell them before they are manufactured,” says Trine Young.
Rodinia has attracted the interest of several major international customers, including international sportswear brand Hummel and pioneering fashion brands including Mads Nørgaard Copenhagen and children’s clothing brand Wheat.
“For Hummel, it’s a new and exciting way of manufacturing clothes. Not only is there a great demand for less climate-impacting clothing, but we can move production closer to us and deliver the same high quality to our customers faster. We see great opportunities in this collaboration,” says Andreas Kattenhøj, Product Developer at Hummel.
Starting in Europe, then the US, Rodinia’s ambition is to establish a worldwide network of microfactories that produces garments for international high street and luxury brands with a strong environmental awareness.
“We are investing in Rodinia because EIFO’s ambition is to support companies that can make a difference. Rodinia makes it possible to reduce the overproduction of clothing, thereby saving a lot of resources and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Its technology reduces water and chemical consumption and eliminates the need for long-distance transport. This is not only beneficial for the climate, but also good for business,” says Rünno Allikvi, Investment Manager in EIFO’s Green Transition investment team.
“As an Article 9 fund, we were impressed with Rodinia’s ability to transparently collect and process data from production units at different geographical locations. The fashion industry will benefit from this highly efficient low-volume-enabling production system and will find having impact data invaluable as environmental regulations expand,” adds Stefan Maard, General Partner at Climentum Capital.
Click to read more funding news.
