Paris – January 20, 2026 – OEKO-TEX® today announced a full collaboration with TextileGenesis, a Lectra company, to digitally trace and authenticate organic cotton, strengthening fraud prevention across the supply chain. This announcement follows a successful pilot and brings together OEKO-TEX®’s certification expertise and closed testing system with TextileGenesis’ digital traceability platform to deliver a secure, end-to-end solution for managing certified organic cotton flows. At its core is the digitization of Transaction Certificates, bringing physical material movements and certification data together on a single solution and replacing fragmented, paper-based processes.
Organic cotton continues to gain strategic importance in the global textile and apparel industry as brands, regulators, and consumers increasingly demand credible sustainability claims and verified supply chains. This trend is reflected in the rapid expansion of the OEKO-TEX® ORGANIC COTTON certification, which recorded a 381% year-over-year growth by 31 December 2025.
As volumes grow, so does the need for credible, fraud-resistant certification systems. Against this backdrop, OEKO-TEX® chose TextileGenesis to take a future-facing approach to organic cotton certification, tackling one of the industry’s most pressing challenges: fraud prevention through the digitization of Transaction Certificates in organic cotton supply chains.
From fiber to data: Building a secure digital chain of custody
A key component is TextileGenesis’ token-based fibercoin™ technology, which links each physical shipment of organic cotton to a unique digital token within a closed-loop system. This approach enables transparent, tamper-resistant traceability from fiber to finished product, while significantly reducing administrative effort for ginners, spinners, manufacturers, and brands.
“OEKO-TEX® plays an important role in setting trusted standards for organic cotton across the textile industry, and we’re pleased to collaborate with the OEKO-TEX® Organic Cotton Standard on this initiative,” says Amit Gautam, CEO of TextileGenesis.
“By using TextileGenesis’ pioneering Fibercoin™ technology, we are creating a digital chain of custody for OEKO-TEX® certified organic cotton and eliminating pdf/paper-based Transaction Certificates. This collaboration helps ensure that organic cotton claims are easier to manage and verifiable at scale.”
The initiative builds on OEKO-TEX®’s established in-house GMO testing, conducted exclusively within its 17 international testing institutes. Both raw fiber and raw yarn are tested, ensuring that organic standards are verified at the very beginning of the supply chain and consistently upheld throughout. From a strategic perspective, the cooperation marks an important milestone in OEKO-TEX®’s broader digital roadmap. According to OEKO-TEX® CEO Dr. Alfred J. Beerli, the collaboration is a natural next step: “Working with TextileGenesis is a key part of how we are moving our certification system into the digital future. Secure, transparent, and data-driven processes strengthen the integrity of OEKO-TEX® while making certification more efficient and scalable – especially for organic cotton certified by us.”
The digitization of Transaction Certificates for OEKO-TEX® ORGANIC COTTON is intentionally designed as a starting point. “We see this as a pilot with much wider potential,” Dr. Beerli explains. “Once established, this approach can be extended step by step to other OEKO-TEX® certifications and product groups.” Laying the groundwork for the next phase of certification, this next phase in the collaboration builds on the success of a traceability pilot launched in 2025 involving eleven supply chain actors. It enabled OEKO-TEX® to trace selective organic cotton supply chains across India and Bangladesh, involving ginning, spinning mills, fabric mills, and certification bodies. Feedback from suppliers demonstrated strong acceptance of the digital approach, highlighting high usability, effective training, and comprehensive support. Companies such as KKP Spinning Mills Pvt. Ltd., Milan Ginning Pressing Limited, and Atlas Export Enterprises agreed that the collaboration strengthened compliance and trust across the certified supply chain.
OEKO-TEX® and TextileGenesis will now continue to jointly develop the platform, with the aim of scaling digital Transaction Certificates across additional organic cotton supply chains. Looking ahead, digital platforms will play a central role in safeguarding trust in textile certifications. “Real-time transparency and interoperability will be essential going forward,” predicts Dr. Beerli. “Our ambition is not only to keep pace with industry developments, but to actively help shape future-ready certification standards.”
About TextileGenesis:
Founded in 2018, TextileGenesis, a Lectra company, provides a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that enables fashion brands and sustainable textile manufacturers to ensure reliable, secure, and fully digital traceability of their textiles, from the fiber to the consumer, and thereby guarantee their authenticity and origins. The platform provides traceability for textiles, leather, and footwear, employing fiber-forward traceability for sustainable and certified materials and a Supply Chain discovery approach to traceability for conventional materials.
Its innovative traceability mechanism, which addresses both ends of the textile value chain, as well as its network of partners for material certification and its technology platform, guarantees the exchange and tracking of reliable and secure data throughout a material’s life cycle. The TextileGenesis platform also identifies and flags supply chain compliance/legal risks across the value chain from tier 1–4 for brands.
About Lectra:
At the forefront of innovation since its founding in 1973, Lectra provides industrial intelligence technology solutions—combining software in SaaS mode, cutting equipment, data, and associated services—to players in the fashion, automotive, and furniture industries. With boldness and passion, Lectra accelerates the transformation and success of its customers in a world in perpetual motion thanks to the key technologies of Industry 4.0: AI, big data, cloud, and the Internet of Things.
The Group is present in more than one hundred countries. It operates three production sites for its cutting equipment, located in France, China, and the United States. Lectra’s 3,000 employees are driven by three core values: being open-minded thinkers, trusted partners, and passionate innovators. They all share the same commitment to social responsibility, which is one of the pillars of Lectra’s strategy for ensuring sustainable growth for both the company and its customers.
The company is listed on Euronext and is included in CAC All Shares, CAC Technology, EN Tech Leaders, and ENT PEA-PME 150 indices. For more information, please visit lectra.com.
About OEKO-TEX®:
For more than 30 years, OEKO-TEX® has offered standardized solutions that companies in the textile and leather industry can use to transparently and sustainably optimize their manufacturing processes. Based on scientific principles, OEKO-TEX® contributes to bringing high-quality, safe, and sustainable products to the market. 35,000 manufacturers, brands, and trading companies in more than 100 countries are currently working with OEKO-TEX®.
At the same time, millions of consumers around the world use the OEKO-TEX® labels as a guide for their responsible purchasing decisions. Products and suppliers certified by OEKO-TEX® can be found in the online OEKO-TEX® buying guide at https://www.oeko-tex.com/en/buying-guide. Follow OEKO-TEX® on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and WeChat.
