Giotex Mexico: 100% Sustainable with Autocoro

Giotex on the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, is the largest manufacturer of sustainable polyester-cotton blended yarns, knitted fabrics, T-shirts and sweatshirts in Latin America with an annual capacity of 7 200 tons. Giotex exports their sustainable products worldwide.

The specialty of Giotex products is, on the one hand, that they consist of 100% recycled material and not, as is often the case, of mixtures of recycled and new fibres. On the other hand, Giotex has succeeded in largely eliminating processes that are harmful to the environment, such as dyeing. Another strength of Giotex is that the yarns and textiles are of the same quality as textiles made from new fibres.

Premium quality from 100% sustainable raw materials

Giotex has been in the textile business for more than 50 years. A few years ago, the young management team at Giotex radically changed the corporate philosophy and the product portfolio to sustainable textiles with premium quality, manufactured in strict compliance with ecological and ethical requirements with consistently transparent processes and at low prices for customers, as is more common in the classic textile business. Giotex has a high affinity for sustainability. Yucatan is one of the most ecologically valuable parts of Mexico, Giotex is surrounded by world natural and cultural heritage.

Silvia López, Public Relations Manager, says: “We are proud not only of our clean and sustainable process but also the quality our products have, and that we deliver to our clients. These are the main reasons that have made us one of the most important sustainable textile and garment companies of the Americas.”

The 540 employees at Giotex sort and prepare 6 million tons of used textiles for spinning every year, in numerous colours and fibre quality variants. To cover the polyester content, Giotex mixes PES from recycled PET bottles – more than 6 million annually – with industrial polyester waste and with polyester from used textiles.

High-tech is a key competence for sustainability

The highly developed know-how in recycling processing and a high-tech machine park, from fibre processing, through spinning to knitting, these are the key factors for the success of Giotex. In the spinning mill, Giotex produces both ring and rotor yarns from recycled fibres. The Autocoro rotor-spinning machines installed there are tailor-made for the Giotex corporate philosophy. The individual assignment of the spinning positions with the differently sized and coloured lots, the flowing changes of the lots during running production, without waiting times and manual intervention, thus ensuring profitability for every lot size.

Silvia Lopez, Public Relations Manager, adds: “Autocoro has been a key addition to our sustainability strategy. Rotor spinning is more energy efficient with Autocoro than with our older rotor-spinning machines; this is a milestone, since yarn production takes up the lion’s share of the energy requirements of textile production. Therefore Autocoro makes an important contribution to our 160 million kWh annual savings.”

Coloured textiles, completely without chemicals

Giotex offers sustainable textiles in a wide variety of colours. But unlike conventional textiles, these are not dyed, Giotex uses the existing variety of colours in the recycling raw materials and mixes them very precisely so that yarns are produced in homogeneous and reproducible colours, without dyes, without chemicals. Coloured yarns and textiles without dyeing also save water, 6 million liters a year and energy costs, almost 160 million kWh. The consistent avoidance of chemical processes, which also protects the fibres, is proven by the excellent quality results of the yarns and textiles. With this strategy Giotex has achieved a perfect symbiosis of sustainability, quality, and economy.