FAISALABAD – In a major industrial breakthrough, a group of the University of Agriculture Faisalabad experts is working on making sustainable jeans after it successfully extracted hemp thread from indigenous cannabis.
It was revealed by said Dr Asad Farooq, the chairperson of the Department of Fibre and Textile Technology, in an interview with a private news channel.
Hemp fabric is a sustainable textile made of fibres of a very high-yielding crop in the cannabis sativa plant family.
After extraction, the scientists processed it with cotton to make sustainable fabric.
“We have signed an MoU with a US-based company and will soon begin mass production,” said Dr Asad Farooq told Samaa.
He said that the US and Europe are potential markets as they are replacing cotton with the sustainable fibre.
The fibres are first extracted from the plant in a process called retting and then impurities are removed before developing it into yarn with chemical treatment. The treated soft febic is then blended with cotton.
We used a ratio of 20:80 of hemp and cotton, respectively, said Dr Farooq.
He said that the hemp fabric is costly than cotton because of complicated process but the price would down once the produce is boosted.
