I am trying to find a list of dyes manufacturers. Could you please help?

Name: Natalia

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Linda Knutson's book
Synthetic Dyes for
Natural Fibers
is still the best introduction to the chemistry of dyeing for hand dyers.

Ann Milner's book
The Ashford Book of Dyeing
describes many brands of dye for hand dyers.

Heinrich Zollinger

Color Chemistry: Synthesis, Properties, and Applications of Organic Dyes and Pigments

Waring and Hallas's

The Chemistry and Application of Dyes (Topics in Applied Chemistry)

includes recipes for synthesizing reactive dyes

Country or region: Spain

Message: Hello! I am trying to find a list of dyes manufacturers, but I just find Dystar as the biggest manufacturer, and I'm a bit confused about the big companies that make all the well known products such as Remazol, Procion, Jacquard, etc. Could you please help? I need this info for a textile art project...thanks so much! =)

Most dyes are now made by many different dye manufacturers around the world, especially in China and India. You can find many examples of these dye manufacturers with a quick web search (try "dye manufacturers"), but in order to make a complete list of all dye manufacturers, you'd have to make a huge project of collecting them. You could start with some of the web sites with listings from many different dye manufacturers, such as the DMOZ directory, the Yahoo directory, a directory called Fibre2Fashion, and a list of dye suppliers in India. (Note as you search that the term "organic", when applied to dyes, includes all synthetic dyes, including those made from petroleum products; it does not refer to "organically grown" or "natural" dyestuffs.)

Jacquard Products does not, as far as I know, manufacture dyes, but they do repackage them, mixing their own colors of dyes such as the Procion MX dyes, and also packaging them into new products such as the ColorHue Instant Set Silk Dyes, which act like pigments but are said to be based on fiber reactive dyes. They retail dyes directly to hand dyers, and also sell dyes through other hand-dyeing suppliers around the world. Dye retailers who buy dyes from Jacquard Products may also acquire dyes elsewhere. Other dye retailers in the US that do not manufacture their own dyes, but repackage and mix colors, include PRO Chemical & Dye (and G&K Craft Industries, which I think is their parent company), Dharma Trading Company, and Aljo Manufacturing, all of which sell many different types of dyes. A smaller dye retailer is Colorado Wholesale Dyes, also known as Best Dyes or Grateful Dyes. These are all US dye retailers, just as examples, because you see their names a lot. For a more complete list of dye retailers, including many in Europe and elsewhere, see my page, "Sources for Dyeing Supplies Around the World". This page lists retailers suitable for hand dyers to buy from, in the small quantities a hand dyer can use, with minimum orders ranging from 10 grams per dye color to one pound (454 grams) per dye color, depending on the company. Retailers are very important for hand dyers; dye manufacturers such as Dystar typically require a minimum order of five kilograms of each dye color, which is prohibitively difficult for the dye artist to handle.

There are so many dye factories that making an exhaustive list is not very interesting. It's more interesting to look at the history of which dye companies originally introduced each dye. The fiber reactive dyes are easier to follow than the acid dyes, since they have not been out of patent as long, so I'll concentrate on them.

The Procion dyes, including Procion MX, Procion H, and other fiber reactive dye types, were first introduced by Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). The Procion MX dyes were the first fiber reactive dyes suitable for use on cotton, starting in 1956. (Some other fiber reactives were introduced earlier for wool.) The ICI company changed into Zeneca in 1992, then merged with BASF in 1996. Dystar was formed in 1995 from a merger of Bayer and Hoechst, which then merged with BASF in 2000. So, the Procion name was owned first by ICI, then Zeneca, then BASF, and is now owned by Dystar. Dystar no longer makes Procion MX dyes, but they still make Procion XL dyes. Dystar also makes Levafix C-A dyes, among others. Unlike most of the new dye manufacturers, Dystar has pursued Oeko-Tex Standard certification for many of its products.

The same type of dyes that are in the Procion MX dyes, the dichlorotriazines, are now made by many different factories in Asia, though not, of course, under the brand name "Procion", though quite a few dye retailers still use the term "Procion" even for dyes manufactured under different names, as long as they're chemically the same type of dye. Manufacturers commonly list their Procion MX-type dyes as "cold" brand dyes, with M codes, instead of MX; for example, the same dye known as Procion Red MX-5B is sold by Jai Radhe Sales (to choose the first one I happened to see) as "'Cold' Brand Dye" Red M5B, also labeled "Red 2" from the generic Colour Index name, reactive red 2.

The Remazol fiber reactive dyes, which are vinyl sulfone dyes, were first introduced by Hoechst, so the name 'Remazol' is now owned by Dystar. Many different factories in Asia now make vinyl sulfone dyes, though not under the brand name Remazol, commonly listed as either "vinyl sulfone" or "vinyl sulphone". Tobasign is a Spanish retailer of vinyl sulfone dyes for dye artists.

Drimaren reactive dyes are manufactured by Clariant, another major dye manufacturer.

The Cibacron dyes and the Lanaset dyes were both originally made by Ciba Geigy. Ciba was the Swiss company Chemische Industrie Basel, which merged with Geigy in 1971. The Ciba Specialty Chemicals Textile Effects business was sold to Huntsman Textile Effects in 2006. Their Lanasol, Lanaset, and Lanacron dyes series retained their names, but the Cibacron dyes, logically, were given a new name, which turned out to be Novacron. (You can see other names affected by this change on a page entitled "Huntsman Product Tradenames".) PRO Chemical & Dye still sells the Cibacron dyes under their own trade name of Sabracron, and the Lanaset dyes under their own trade name of Sabraset, while Maiwa Handprints and some other retailers sell the Lanaset dyes under the brand name Telana.

I don't know when the patents on the Cibacron dyes and the Lanaset dyes will expire (or whether they've already done so), but it looks as though they are still in effect, because I cannot find them being sold by any other manufacturer. International patents last for up to twenty years, if I understand correctly, and the first Lanaset dyes were patented in 1985, so it's an interesting question what will happen next.

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Posted: Thursday - January 26, 2012 at 11:50 AM

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I am trying to find a list of dyes manufacturers. Could you please help?

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