Product liability and sustainable product development

Alligo’s products must be characterised by high quality and safety. Meeting customer’s demand for more sustainable products requires innovation and targeted work. The breadth of Alligo’s range represents both a challenge and a major opportunity to drive sustainable development.

High requirements for quality and safety

Alligo has a relatively high proportion of own brands, particularly within personal protective equipment, including clothing and footwear. Some products, such as workwear, protective equipment, tools, and chemicals, entail particularly high requirements for quality and safety. Alligo works systematically with quality requirements, product testing and certifications to ensure compliance with high safety require­ments in relation to function, chemical content and documentation.

Sustainable product development

Alligo’s aim is for its own brand clothing to last a long time. If a garment can be used for a long time, this reduces unnecessary production, resulting in lower consumption of raw materials, energy, water and chemicals. A longer product lifespan also means reduced transport between all the different stages in the production chain and ultimately less waste.

To ensure workwear is safe and of con­sistently high quality, Alligo’s test lab performs almost 700 checks every year. In the lab, textile engineers work to ensure, among other things, that clothing lasts longer and that the quality requirements and the requirements for relevant certifications are met.

Greater opportunity for more sustainable choices

Based on an assessment how Alligo’s own brand clothing can be made more sustainable, we have identified key areas that will enable us to offer more sustainable products and so make it easier for customers to make more sustainable choices:

• Choice of materials
• PFAS
• Origin of fibre
• Manufacturing processes
• Water purification

Several actions have been initiated, for example to increase the proportion of recycled polyester in clothing, reduce the use of water and chemicals by switching to the Dope-dye* colouring process, and to phase out PFAS.

*  Traditionally, finished textiles are dyed in the required colour. Dope-dye means that the plastic material used in production is dyed in the required colour before the textile is produced.

Certifications

Enabling customers to make more sustainable choices requires clear information to be provided about the products and services in a transparent and easily accessible manner. This is where certification plays a key role.

Alligo has chosen the third-party certification OEKO-TEX® STANDARD 100 for clothing, which stipulates permissible thresholds for chemicals in textile products. Clothing marked with this certification is considered to be safe from chemicals that harm the environment and health.

As of today, 71 per cent of Alligo’s own brand clothing is certified in accordance with OEKO-TEX® STANDARD 100. The ambition is that all new materials used in our own clothing should be certified by OEKO-TEX.