Applied DNA Sciences revealed it has received purchase orders from a textile customer totaling $1.6 million to supply molecular taggant to tag textile fibers.
The company said it expects to ship the majority of the purchase orders during the current quarter ending Sept. 30, with the balance expected to be shipped in the subsequent quarter. It did not name the customer.
At the same time, the company said it is progressing with textile projects involving cotton, man-made cellulosic fibers, recycled polyester, leather, down and feather, and specialty coatings with leading apparel brands that, if successful and adopted, would represent new commercial opportunities for Applied DNA in fiscal 2022.
The molecular taggant, a key component to the company’s CertainT traceability system, serves as an identifier that can be tested for its presence as the material travels throughout the global supply chain. CertainT for textiles is proven at a commercial scale, which is essential to brands and manufacturers with diversified supply chains that require scale, flexibility and traceability.
“We are pleased to see demand for tagged textiles approaching pre-pandemic levels,” MeiLin Wan, vice president of textile sales at Applied DNA, said. “The pandemic has forced textile brands and their suppliers to re-imagine their supply chain models to prioritize sustainability, brand protection and supply chain traceability. Having spent the pandemic positioning CertainT as the means through which to accelerate their traceability investments, we believe that the projects before us represent the future of textile supply chain traceability.”
Related Stories
The CertainT platform has three technology pillars–tag, test, track–that allow raw materials and products to be tagged with a unique molecular identifier. All the data points associated with tagging and testing are tracked by uploading to a secure cloud database. The CertainT platform can be used across industries, including textiles, cannabis, military, leather, fertilizer, pharmaceuticals and personal care.
“The shock waves created by the pandemic, together with newly expanded government regulations that require greater proof of product provenance, have created an urgent need for supply chain traceability that can only be addressed, we believe, through a holistic approach that marries secure technologies and systems to deliver true end-to-end traceability,” Dr. James A. Hayward, president and CEO of Applied DNA, said. “With CertainT, brands and their suppliers can deliver on their brand promise from fiber to finished goods utilizing a platform that is proven at commercial scale across three continents.”
Applied DNA is commercializing LinearDNA, its proprietary, large-scale polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based manufacturing platform that allows for the large-scale production of specific DNA sequences.