The Dole Sunshine Company and Ananas Anam announced their collaboration this week. The world’s largest producer of fruit and vegetables is teaming up with the London based founders of Piñatex, to produce a vegan leather made from pineapple leaf fibres. Through this partnership, Dole aims to achieve its zero fruit loss by 2025.
Ananas Anam is a B-Corp™ certified company responsible for creating and innovating sustainable plant-based textiles. Piñatex’s pineapple leather product has been used by global lifestyle brands such as Nike, Hugo Boss, H&M, Paul Smith and the Hilton Hotel London Bankside.
For this partnership, Dole will provide harvested pineapple plant leaves to Ananas Anam, who will use them to produce Piñatex. The dried and processed leaves form a non-woven mesh as the base of the material.
Pier-Luigi Sigismondi, global president of the Dole Sunshine Company said “At Dole, we believe purpose – and therefore our Promise – must permeate everything we do to address these global challenges head on. Addressing food waste is absolutely important to us, as it is connected to our business and our lives in so many ways. I believe to create tangible solutions and real systemic change to address this issue, we need to converge our purpose with creativity, innovation, and technology. Our partnership with Ananas Anam coupled with global lifestyle brands’ use of this innovation truly bring this convergence to life in a new way.”
“At Ananas Anam, we aim at meeting the challenges of our times by developing innovative products in which commercial success is integrated with, and promotes, social, ecological and cultural development. By connecting on a deep level with the people we work with, we build ecosystems that are bound together, symbiotically grow together in order to bring about positive changes into the world”, said Dr Carmen Hijosa, Founder and Chief Creative & Innovation Officer at Ananas Anam.
“Through our partnership with Dole, our entity in the Philippines will access a much larger volume of pineapple leaf fibres, to meet the ever-increasing demand for Piñatex® not only in fashion, but also in the upholstery and automotive sectors. Working closely with Dole’s teams on the ground will help us to create a wider positive social impact among farming communities and to continuously reduce our environmental footprint by valorising waste at scale”, said Melanie Broye-Engelkes, CEO of Ananas Anam.
