ARTEIXO – Spanish conglomerate Inditex, the parent company of Zara, Massimo Dutti, and Pull&Bear, has acquired a stake in the US sustainable agriculture start-up Galy as part of its broader sustainability strategy.
During the company’s annual general meeting, CEO Oscar Garcia Maceiras announced to shareholders that Inditex had acquired an undisclosed stake in Galy. Founded in 2019, Galy has developed a biotechnological process to create lab-grown cotton from plant cells, branded as Literally Cotton.
This acquisition is said to align with Inditex’s commitment to halving emissions across its entire supply chain by 2030 and builds on other sustainability investments. In 2022, Inditex invested in Circ, a US fashion technology company specialising in textile recycling, and signed a three-year agreement to purchase recycled fibres from Infinited Fiber Company.
These investments aim to help the Spanish company achieve its goal of sourcing 40 per cent of its fibres from traditional recycling methods and 25 per cent from innovative materials by the end of 2030.
Galy, one of the five winners of the 2020 H&M Foundation Global Change Award and the 2021 LVMH Innovation Award in the sustainability category, counts Carmichael Roberts, co-founder of Material Impact and chairman of Kleiner Perkins, and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, among its current investors and stakeholders.
However, during the annual meeting , several Inditex investors emphasised the need for greater transparency within the company, requesting the publication of its supplier list and disclosure of its use of air cargo transport.
In response, Maceiras noted that the company provided “detailed supply chain information to certain stakeholders who requested it,” but did not specify if Inditex would publicly share its list of top factories, as requested by Dutch pension fund Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP at the meeting.
In contrast, other fashion companies, such as H&M, have already made their full supplier lists public.
