Texon significantly increases sustainable content of Sportflex box toe puff material

Following a project with one of the world’s leading sports brands, Texon has reengineered one of its most popular box toe puff materials for the footwear industry to include more sustainable content.

Collaborating across its supply chain to source more sustainable materials, Texon has increased the recycled content in its Sportflex products from 4% to a minimum of 50%. The move forms part of Texon’s sustainability drive and its ambition to become a zero waste business by 2025.

Box toe puffs are inserted into shoes, between the lining and the upper, to help the footwear retain its form. Texon Sportflex is an extruded material that is used to create soft, flexible toes in lightweight footwear and deconstructed athletic shoes. Extremely resilient to wear and tear, and with good shape retention and a softer feel, Texon Sportflex is also available with a double-coated adhesive backer (Texon Sportflex SR).

To provide its customers with a wider choice of more sustainable materials, Texon has created eco and bio versions of Sportflex. Eco iterations of the material are based on post-industrial waste, while the bio version – which was created for a specific sports footwear customer – is based on sugar cane waste.

Boyd Mulder Director of NPDI, Marketing and Sustainability at Texon, said:

“Reducing our use of virgin materials by at least 50% by 2025 is one of our key zero waste ambitions. To achieve this we are actively reviewing our existing product portfolio – identifying materials that can be re-engineered to make them more sustainable, without compromising the performance for which they are known. Through careful sourcing and joint development efforts our technical team has managed to significantly improve the sustainability of Texon Sportflex, creating next generation variants that are more closely aligned with our customers’ own environmental objectives.”

“Not only are we re-using materials and reducing our use of virgin petroleum-based materials, but we are also making significant progress in closing the loop for our material streams to achieve our 2025 ambition of zero waste. Working closely with our customers and supply chain partners remains essential to developing environmentally friendly breakthroughs such as Texon Sportflex.”

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