Textile Dyeing: Where ABB Robots Fit

Conventional textile dyeing uses large amounts of heated water, chemicals and energy, and it leaves wastewater that has to be treated. ABB quotes a World Bank estimate that almost 20 percent of global industrial water pollution comes from the textile industry. The craft has moved from hand-worked vats to closed machines, and the weighing and mixing of dyes is now being automated too. This post covers indigo vats and the first synthetic dye, the automatic dye departments of the 1930s, today's colour kitchens and lab systems, and where ABB robots, which already work in textile plants and chemistry labs, could fit.

Freshly dyed fabrics laid out in rows to dry in the sun at a dye factory in Narayanganj, 2024. Photo: Pinu Rahman / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

From indigo vats to the first automatic dye houses

People were dyeing fibres long before factories. Dyed flax fibres found in a prehistoric cave in Georgia date back to about 34,000 BC, and a piece of cotton dyed with madder was recovered at Mohenjo-daro from the third millennium BCE. Plant dyes such as woad, indigo and madder were important parts of the economies of Asia and Europe until synthetic dyes arrived in the mid-19th century. Making the dye was heavy work in itself: an 1877 photograph from Allahabad, India, shows men standing in a vat and beating indigo by hand.

Men standing in a vat and beating indigo by hand during indigo manufacture in Allahabad, India, 1877. Photo: Oscar Mallitte via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Chemistry changed the trade in a few decades. In 1856 William Henry Perkin, who was trying to make an artificial version of the drug quinine, made mauveine from coal tar instead. It was the first synthetic dye and became the first commercially available mass-produced dye, and others such as fuchsin followed in 1858. In 1869 synthetic alizarin copied the red of madder and collapsed the market for the naturally grown plant. By the 1870s natural dyestuffs were disappearing from commercial dyeing.

William Henry Perkin, who made mauveine, the first synthetic dye, in 1856. Photo: Elliot & Fry, Science History Institute via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Dye houses then moved the work into machines. In winch dyeing and in jiggers the fabric moves through a still bath, while in jet and softflow machines the fabric and the dye liquor both move. Package dyeing winds yarn on perforated cones and places them in a dye vessel. The machines still needed people beside them: in November 1918 George P. Lewis photographed a woman removing warp from a balling machine at Crossley & Co.'s Victorian Dye Works in Bradford. By 1939 the Argaman Textile Dyeing & Finishing Co. in Ramat Gan had what the Matson photo studio called an automatic dyeing department.

The automatic dyeing department of the Argaman Textile Dyeing & Finishing Co. in Ramat Gan, 1939. Photo: Matson Collection, Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Colour kitchens and lab systems in dye houses now

This autumn's news is about using less water and energy. On 21 October Alchemie Technology promoted Dye-to-Service, which places its Endeavour digital dyeing machines with partner mills in Taiwan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, India and Portugal, so brands can buy low-carbon dyeing as a service instead of buying equipment. Alchemie reports up to 30% less chemistry than conventional processing. On 5 October the Paris start-up EverDye, whose bio-based pigment process runs at room temperature and which it says cuts CO2 emissions by 90%, announced ZDHC certification and a place among the 20 start-ups CEMATEX selected for its start-up grant.

Workers with drums of water and piles of cloth at a dye pit in Kano, Nigeria, 2015. Photo: Andy Musa Chantu / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The more mechanical change is in how dyes are weighed and mixed. Italy's Lawer sells complete automatic colour kitchens that prepare the powder and liquid recipes a dye house uses, plus lab systems that prepare solutions and dye fabric or yarn samples in line. ENMOS, a Turkish company founded in 2004, offers dyestuff dispensing, dosing of chemicals, salt and soda ash, and a lab platform called Profix LAB that prepares dye solutions, dyes the samples and builds production recipes. Its marketing director Meral Doğan says customers reach 98 to 99 percent lab-to-bulk correlation. Lawer's Filippo Lanaro says constant quality "can be only reached by automating the dye preparation processes."

An ABB GoFa cobot inside one of XtalPi's automated laboratory workstations in Shanghai. Photo: ABB

We found no ABB robot in a dye kitchen. ABB's link to dye houses today runs through drives and sensors: Dilmenler, a maker of dyeing and finishing machines, uses ABB drives, AC500 PLCs and operator panels, and the dyer Tintoria Stamperia Gorlese fitted ABB Pressductor load cells to measure web tension on its jiggers. ABB robots do work in textile plants. At HUESKER in Gescher, Germany, an IRB 6700 in a circular cell lifts twine reels of up to 17 kg off the production machines and stacks them, taking about 2.5 tonnes a day off its workers. A robot lifting dye beams or loading lab samples is a possibility, though no such project has been announced.

An ABB IRB 6700 in its circular cell at HUESKER in Gescher, Germany, where it handles twine reels. Photo: ABB

Where dye houses and robots go next

For clothes buyers, Alchemie's pitch is aimed at the brands they buy from. It says Dye-to-Service lets emerging labels and medium-sized brands use low-carbon dyeing through local partner mills without capital investment. Fully automated labs already exist in other chemistry: at XtalPi in Shanghai, more than 100 ABB GoFa cobots run lab workstations, handling liquids, adding samples, filtering, diluting and stirring, while GoFa arms on mobile robots carry samples between stations. A dye lab that weighs, mixes and dyes samples does a similar kind of work, which makes it a plausible next job for cobots.

Mobile robots carrying ABB GoFa cobots, which move samples between XtalPi's lab workstations. Photo: ABB

Data comes next inside the dye house. ENMOS's Focus software collects data across the factory, and Lawer's Lanaro argues for digital control of traceability alongside automation. HUESKER started with heavy, repetitive handling, and it simulated its robot cell in RobotStudio before commissioning, which shortened the start-up. A cell that moves dye beams or yarn packages between machines would be planned the same way. Our posts on textile mill yarn handling and denim finishing cover neighbouring jobs in textile mills.

The IRB 6700 at HUESKER gripping a finished twine reel. Photo: ABB

Cost is the first obstacle. ABB notes that the textile industry is highly fragmented, with many small and medium-sized firms that are exposed to swings in energy prices, and Alchemie says high investment costs and minimum order quantities keep cleaner dyeing out of reach for smaller brands. New processes must also meet chemical rules such as the ZDHC list of restricted substances that EverDye had to satisfy. And dyeing still depends on people: the textile sector employs nearly 75 million people worldwide, according to ABB, and Lawer stresses that long experience with the products being dosed is part of what it sells.

A woman removing warp from a balling machine at the Victorian Dye Works of Crossley & Co., Bradford, November 1918. Photo: George P. Lewis, Imperial War Museums via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

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