Gildan: Turning Biomass into the Height of Fashion
Originally published in Best Practice: Spring 2015 issue
Steam is essential for clothing and textile giant Gildan, a constant - and hitherto costly - supply of steam to heat the company’s knitting, bleaching, dyeing, finishing and cutting facilities.
Initially famous for producing blank T-shirts and sweatshirts for others to put their logo on, Montreal-based Gildan manufactures activewear, socks, and underwear at its facilities in Central America, the Caribbean Basin, the US and, on a smaller scale, Bangladesh, and employs some 43,000 people worldwide.
Like most textile and socks manufacturing plants, the company traditionally relied on fossil fuels, particularly bunker oil, to produce all the steam required. Today, however, following an environmental rethink and some significant financial investment, 53% of Gildan’s total energy comes from biomass.
