Strengthening Textile Traceability
CETI and SMX Collaboration Featured in International Fiber Journal (Issue 2, 2026)
The collaboration between CETI and SMX continues to progress, with recent results highlighted in an article published in the International Fiber Journal (Issue 2, 2026).
This publication showcases a major step forward in textile traceability, addressing one of the key challenges of the industry: how to move from sustainability claims to verifiable, audit-ready data.
From Claims to Proof: A New Approach to Traceability
As sustainability requirements increase across the textile value chain, companies are expected to provide reliable and transparent information about materials—where they come from, how they are processed, and what happens at the end of their life.
Traditional traceability systems often rely either on:
Digital records (such as ERP systems or digital product passports), which depend on data declarations, or
Physical verification methods (such as chemical or forensic analyses), which can be complex, costly, and difficult to scale.
The approach developed by SMX, and validated by CETI, introduces a combined physical-digital solution that bridges this gap.
How the Technology Works
The solution is based on three key components:
Invisible markers embedded directly into the material, giving it a form of “memory” throughout its lifecycle
Fast, non-destructive reading technologies, allowing identification at any stage without altering the product
A secure digital platform, ensuring traceability data is recorded, protected, and accessible across the value chain
This combination enables continuous and reliable verification, from production to end-of-life, including recycling loops.
CETI’s Role: Ensuring Industrial Reliability
CETI plays a critical role in this collaboration by:
Conducting independent validation of the technology
Developing measurement and verification protocols
Ensuring the detectability and robustness of markers after industrial processing
This guarantees that the solution is not only innovative, but also reliable, scalable, and compatible with real industrial conditions.
A Key Enabler for Circularity
This physical-digital traceability approach opens up significant opportunities for the textile industry, particularly in:
Recycling, by tracking recycled content and ensuring material authenticity
Quality control, by linking product performance to material origin
Sustainability reporting, by providing verifiable evidence instead of declarations
It also supports closed-loop systems, enabling better sorting, reuse, and circular material flows.
From Innovation to Industrial Deployment
While the technology is already demonstrating strong potential, the next step lies in its industrialization:
Integration into existing manufacturing processes
Alignment with digital product passport frameworks
Deployment across complex, multi-actor supply chains
For CETI, this is fully aligned with its mission: to develop innovative textile solutions and make them accessible to the broader industry through validation, scaling, and knowledge transfer.
A Step Forward for the Textile Industry
The collaboration between SMX and CETI illustrates how combining material science, process expertise, and digital technologies can transform traceability into a powerful tool for industrial performance and sustainability.
By enabling reliable, repeatable, and auditable data, this approach marks a transition from ambition to implementation—supporting the development of a more transparent and circular textile industry.
“Circularity in nonwovens and fibers is no longer a nice-to-have narrative. It is becoming a hard requirement. [...]
The inability to demonstrate — at the product level — what a material is, where it originated, and what occurred across processing… [...]
SMX technology gives materials memory… [...]
The uniqueness question is not ‘does anyone else do physical marking or digital traceability?’ but rather ‘does this implementation deliver operational superiority and evidentiary strength at scale? [...]
We are ready to design circular programs that can be verified at scale, not just claimed.”
Acknowledgements
CETI would like to warmly thank the International Fiber Journal for featuring this work, as well as the author, Mr. Philippe Wijns, for highlighting these advancements.
We also extend our sincere thanks to SMX for their collaboration and trust in developing and validating this innovative approach.
