The Centre provides practical and financial backing for manufacturers to work with experts from universities and research organisations to create new high-value, ‘high tech’ products. As part of its Textile Innovation Programme, the Centre has developed anti-counterfeiting methods for the fashion industry using DNA markers.

Currently the high quality textile and fashion markets, along with other key regional sectors like pharmaceuticals, are facing a growing crisis where counterfeit products are accounting for up to 10% of sales.

The value of the technical textiles market, which covers a wide range of sectors including medical, engineering, construction, automotive and aerospace has grown to an estimated £30 billion. New technologies, coupled with increasing environmental concerns, are opening up major opportunities for companies that can create lighter, stronger components, and materials that can sense and adjust to their environment.

The Centre is working with APDN, an American company based at Stony Brook University in New York, and has succeeded in impregnating fabrics with botanical DNA so they can be authenticated with 100% accuracy using the same testing methods used by forensic labs for criminal investigations. 

The suit nominated is worsted wool in a blue chalk pinstripe, impregnated with SigNature DNA, a unique and a powerful means to authenticate originality. This helps protect the quality and integrity of textiles by safeguarding against counterfeiting, and providing secure, affordable and forensic methods to authenticate originality. Stable and persistent, virtually any item can be protected with SigNature DNA with an error frequency of less than 1 in a trillion.

SigNature DNA is environmentally friendly, “green” technology based on botanical DNA; cannot be copied, viewed under a microscope, or re-engineered; provides forensic proof of authenticity.

For more information, please visit www.textilehouse.co.uk