Bangladesh-based manufacturer Harnest has added two new partners, Indorama Ventures and Ambercycle, to its Responsible Trims Collection, extending a platform originally built around biodegradable polyester into industrial recycled polyester and textile-to-textile regenerated polyester. The announcement, made on June 3, 2026 from Dhaka and London, expands a manufacturing initiative that targets one of the least visible but most material-intensive parts of any garment: the threads, elastics, labels and drawcords that hold it together.
Harnest, which describes itself as one of Bangladesh’s leading vertically integrated Tier 2 and Tier 3 manufacturers, launched the Responsible Trims Collection earlier this year with Swiss materials company OceanSafe as its first partner. The addition of Indorama Ventures and Ambercycle marks what the company calls a significant expansion of the platform and a step toward making responsible apparel components commercially available at industrial scale.
Why Trims Have Been a Blind Spot
For most sustainability-focused brands, attention tends to concentrate on the primary fabric of a garment, the material visible to the customer and most often highlighted in marketing. Trims rarely get the same scrutiny, despite making up a substantial share of a garment’s overall bill of materials. That gap matters for two reasons. First, mismatched polymers, such as nylon thread sewn into a polyester garment, can contaminate recycling streams and push otherwise recoverable garments toward disposal rather than reprocessing. Second, with global recycled fiber use still in the low single digits, any pathway that scales recycled or regenerated material into high-volume, frequently replaced components like thread and elastic represents a meaningful lever for reducing virgin polyester dependence across an entire collection, not just a hero product.
“Circularity will not scale through fabric innovation alone,” said Assef Shaikh, CEO of Harnest. “The smaller components of a garment are often where circular design becomes complicated. Threads, elastics, labels and drawcords need to perform, they need to be available, and they need to work inside real sourcing systems. By partnering with Indorama Ventures and Ambercycle, we are connecting responsible material innovation with the manufacturing infrastructure required to bring it into commercial use.”
Two New Partners, Two Different Routes to Circular Polyester
The expansion brings two distinct approaches to reducing virgin polyester use into the collection. Indorama Ventures, a long-established player in PET and fiber production, contributes recycled polyester capability built on global manufacturing scale, the kind of consistency and competitive pricing that brands typically need before they will commit to a material across an entire sourcing program. Through Harnest, that capability becomes available specifically for trim applications, where small components are produced in high volumes and need to be interchangeable with existing supply chains.
Ambercycle brings a different proposition: cycora®, a regenerated polyester made through what the company describes as molecular regeneration technology that converts end-of-life textile waste into new, high-quality material. Until now, cycora® has primarily been associated with fabrics in hero garments and capsule collections. Bringing it into trims and component applications extends textile-to-textile circularity into the construction details of a garment, the parts that are rarely marketed but are present in nearly everything a brand produces.
“Circularity means that we have to scale the full garment system, not just the primary fabric,” said Shay Sethi, CEO and Co-Founder of Ambercycle. “Working with Harnest creates an opportunity to bring cycora® into the components that are essential to garment construction. Trims are small in size, but they are decisive in whether responsible materials can scale across the full product.”
A Growing Roster of Material Innovators
With Indorama Ventures and Ambercycle now on board, the Responsible Trims Collection brings together five material innovation partners: OceanSafe, BlockTexx, Jiaren, and the two new additions. Together they span four distinct circular pathways, biodegradable polyester, industrial recycled polyester, textile-to-textile regeneration and circular fiber capability, all routed through a single vertically integrated manufacturing platform.
That structure is central to how Harnest is positioning the collection. Rather than asking brands to manage relationships with multiple specialty material suppliers and then figure out how to integrate each one into existing production, Harnest is offering a single point of access across sewing threads, elastics, labels, drawcords and selected accessory components, with what the company describes as direct sourcing, vertical process control and integrated manufacturing aimed at improving speed, consistency and price competitiveness.
From Innovation Story to Supply Chain Reality
The framing throughout Harnest’s announcement leans heavily on commercial practicality rather than novelty. Shaikh argued that the real barrier facing responsible materials has never been a shortage of innovation, but rather the difficulty of getting that innovation into supply chains that brands already use, at a cost and consistency that makes adoption realistic.
“Brands are asking for lower-impact materials, but they are also asking for commercial reality,” Shaikh said. “They need alternatives that move through existing supply chains, meet performance expectations and are available beyond one-off innovation stories. That is the role Harnest wants to play, helping responsible materials become usable, scalable and commercially relevant.”
According to Harnest, the recycled polyester from Indorama Ventures and the cycora® regenerated polyester from Ambercycle are currently being explored across priority categories including sewing threads, elastics, drawcords and labels, with further partner technologies and applications expected to be added throughout 2026.
What It Signals for the Wider Industry
The expansion reflects a broader pattern emerging across the textile sector this year, in which conversations about circularity are increasingly shifting away from fabric alone and toward the full bill of materials. Trims have historically sat outside that conversation, partly because they are small and unglamorous, and partly because the manufacturing infrastructure to handle alternative materials at scale has not existed in the same way it has for fabric.
By embedding multiple circular material pathways directly into a Tier 2 and Tier 3 manufacturing environment, Harnest is betting that the next phase of textile circularity will be won less through new materials announcements and more through the unglamorous work of integration, getting recycled and regenerated polyester into the everyday components that brands order by the million without a second thought. Whether that bet pays off may depend on how quickly brands begin treating trims as a sourcing decision in their own right, rather than an afterthought attached to the fabric order.
