End-to-end transparency along the entire textile supply chain is becoming increasingly important in global trade relations. For years, Dibella has been committed to ensuring full traceability right back to the origin of the fibres. Now the supplier of durable and high-performance flat linen for contract business has taken the final step, as Managing Director Ralf Hellmann explains: “Working in collaboration with the Chetna Cooperative, we have succeeded for the first time in reducing the impact of our organic cotton procurement volumes on farmers’ living conditions. We are presenting the results in our impact report. This is one of the first of its kind in the world and will become a permanent fixture within our company. It clearly shows the positive effects that our Dibella+ range has at the beginning of the textile supply chain.”

The impact report was preceded by two years of extensive data collection. It was created by the Chetna Cooperative using the Source-Trace™ Farm Management Tool, which collects essential facts from the Chetna Cooperative farms. This real data was evaluated in different categories and compared with Dibella’s procurement volume in the 2017/2018 harvest season (210 t of raw organic Fairtrade cotton fibre). The result was an accurate picture of the “brand-specific” effects of the company’s activities on living and working conditions such as demographics, the housing situation and the qualifications of organic Fairtrade farmers in India.

“The Chetna Cooperative’s unprecedented research has made it possible for us to make the impact data available. Yet, as accurate as the data may be, there are still discrepancies between the total number of farmers and the number of farmers who can provide information. By rolling over the data that has been collected we want to granulate the impact report even further and gain a complete picture of the working and living conditions at organic Fairtrade cotton farms,” says Ralf Hellmann, summarising Dibella’s goal for the future.