While some analysts indicate that digital textile printing only comprises about 4% of the global market now, with adoption much faster in Europe and Asia than in North America, it’s a large and dynamic market with lots of exciting new developments.

I recently came across an Israeli startup founded in 2015 that is poised to add significant value to the on-demand production of a wide variety of textile-based products. Twine, who will ship its first beta machine in February 2018, enables digital coloring of thread, where the color penetrates the fiber itself.

Today, thread and yarns for a variety of uses is dyed in bulk. This requires that cut-and-sew, embroidery and knitting operations maintain large thread inventories. If they underestimate the quantity required for a project, it results in delays and penalties. If they overestimate—and typically they will order 5–10% extra–it results in inventory with its associated costs and inventory obsolescence risks. Plus, states Yariv Bustan, Vice President of Product and Marketing for Twine, “Conventional textile dyeing has significant negative environmental impact. Textile dyeing is responsible for 20% of water pollution globally, according to the World Bank. Conventional processes use a huge amount of water; in fact, the equivalent of the entire volume of the Mediterranean See is polluted every two years.” While Twine won’t be able to impact all of that pollution, it offers another step along the way to reduce the environmental impact of the textiles industry.