Colorifix has removed a major infrastructure barrier, while PILI has taken bio-based indigo into more than 250,000 jeans. Colour range, cost and recurring scale remain the harder test.
Microorganisms can now be used to produce colour for textiles. The harder question is whether those dyes can fit into normal industrial dyeing without forcing the dyehouse itself to become a biotechnology operation.
Until recently, that was one of the awkward parts of Colorifix’s proposition. Its process used engineered microorganisms to produce pigments, but the dyehouse also had to install fermentation equipment, grow the organisms on site and transfer the fermentation liquid into a conventional dye machine. The dyeing stage could use existing machinery; producing the colour on site was less conventional.
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That changed in 2026.
Colorifix has begun supplying concentrated biological dyes that arrive ready to be diluted with water and used in the dye machine. No fermentor is required at the customer site. For mills considering biological colour, this removes a major infrastructure requirement and brings the process much closer to the way conventional dyes are handled.
Microbial dyeing has also moved beyond laboratory demonstrations. At Portuguese dyehouse ATB, Colorifix has been integrated into actual production. At Techtextil in May, members of the ATB team wore yellow, pink and blue garments that ATB’s dyeing director said had been coloured using the bacterial process.
What remains unclear is how much conventional dyeing Colorifix is actually replacing. The company does not publicly disclose enough information on commercial volumes, repeat purchasing or the share of customer dyeing volume shifted to biological colour. Industrial use has been demonstrated, but public figures do not yet show how much conventional dye business or volume is being displaced.
PILI offers a different commercial signal. It focuses on indigo and uses a different production route from Colorifix, combining fermentation with green chemistry. France’s ADEME reported that PILI delivered its first tonne of bio-based indigo to its principal customer in 2024. A subsequent commercial programme had surpassed 250,000 jeans sold by March 2026.
The technology can work. The harder commercial questions are how many colours it can cover, what it costs and whether it can be supplied repeatedly at meaningful industrial scale.
Colorifix says it now has a full colour range for synthetic fibres such as polyester. Its range for cotton and other cellulosics is smaller and still expanding.
Cost and scale remain less settled. Colorifix says it has not yet reached price parity with conventional market offerings, and it does not disclose recurring production volumes at a level that would show broad commercial substitution.
Colorifix commissioned a lifecycle assessment for a process using 52% recycled cotton and 48% recycled polyester jersey. The company reported approximately 77% lower water use, 80% fewer chemicals, 53% less electricity and 31% lower carbon dioxide emissions than conventional dyeing. Colorifix says the assessment was third-party verified. A 2026 review in Biotechnology for the Environment reproduced the reported reductions in water use, chemicals and electricity.
Those figures apply to the tested substrate and process and cannot automatically be extended to every colour, fibre or production configuration.
There is also no public basis yet for assuming that the new concentrate has exactly the same environmental footprint as the earlier on-site fermentation model.
Microbial colour is now a credible industrial alternative in selected applications. It has not yet become a general replacement for synthetic textile dyes.
The next industrial test is whether it can deliver enough colours, at competitive cost and recurring scale, to move from specialist use into routine production.
