Wheat straw could replace wood pulp in viscose and lyocell production

The real test for wheat straw

If wheat straw is going to matter in viscose and lyocell, it has to clear a far less glamorous test than fashion usually celebrates: it must behave like wood pulp, move through existing machinery, and give brands a cleaner supply chain story than the one they have now.

That is the promise sitting at the center of Canopy’s new report, *From Wheat Straw to Wardrobes: Fashioning a new fibre future*. The point is not simply that crop waste can be turned into something useful. It is that wheat straw may be able to become a legitimate feedstock for man-made cellulosic fibres, the kind of material fashion leans on for drape, softness, and that fluid, polished hand that makes a dress fall well or a blouse skim the body.

What Project Latvus actually proved

The report is built around Project Latvus, a pilot launched by Canopy and the Laudes Foundation in 2023 and completed in 2025. The project tested whether pulp made from Indian wheat straw could be used to make viscose and lyocell instead of conventional wood-derived pulp, and it did so with a deliberately full-chain approach, from farm to garment.

Chempolis says the project used its formico® biorefining technology to turn Finnish and Indian wheat straw into Bio2™Textile dissolving pulp suitable for lyocell production. More important for brands, Chempolis says that material directly replaced wood-based pulp as a drop-in feedstock for staple lyocell fibre production. In fashion, “drop-in” is a beautiful word because it means less reinvention, fewer new machines, and a better chance that a promising material can survive the real world.

The pilot was not a solo act. Project Latvus brought together Canopy, Fashion for Good, C&A, H&M Group, Reformation, Chempolis, TITK, Inovafil, Yee Chain, Shahi, Filpucci, DBL, TextileGenesis, and the wheat straw supplier A2P Energy, with support from Laudes Foundation. That mix matters because the fibre question is never only about chemistry. It is about whether growers, processors, mills, traceability platforms, and brands can actually work in sync.

Why this matters to brands

For brands and fibre producers, the big question is not whether wheat straw sounds innovative. It is whether it performs. The fabrics produced in the project were reported to meet brand performance and technical standards across multiple product applications, which is the threshold that separates a meaningful material shift from a glossy pilot.

Reformation and TITK both said the fibre closely matched the look and feel of conventional lyocell. That is the sort of response the industry wants to hear, because lyocell already occupies a sweet spot in fashion: it feels modern, smooth, and versatile, with enough structure for tailoring and enough fluidity for softer silhouettes. Any crop-based substitute has to preserve that balance, or it will be dismissed before it reaches scale.

The wider case is strong. Canopy says more than 300 million trees are cut down annually to make man-made cellulosic fibres and other products. If wheat straw can take even part of that pressure off forest-derived pulp, the fashion industry gets something valuable: a new material pathway that is not built around cutting more trees to make more fabric.

The supply-chain reality check

This is where the story gets serious. A promising fibre is not the same thing as a commercial fibre. Brands would need to see four things before wheat straw can move from pilot to mainstream viscose and lyocell feedstock: performance parity, feedstock availability, processing compatibility, and traceability that can survive scrutiny.

Project Latvus was designed with that in mind. Canopy says the pilot integrated every stage of production, from farm to garment, and used TextileGenesis to document traceability from the field to the finished piece. That kind of chain-of-custody detail matters because crop-based feedstocks only earn credibility when the supply line is legible, not just the material.

Feedstock availability is the other decisive question. Chempolis says more than 90 million tonnes of agricultural residue are burned in India each year. That number tells you why wheat straw is attractive and why the opportunity is bigger than fashion alone. If residue can be captured and processed instead of burned, the upside includes less air pollution, less waste, and new income opportunities for rural communities. It also means the industry would be working with a material that already exists in huge volume, rather than chasing a scarce specialty input.

The bigger fibre basket

Canopy is framing the result as part of a broader Next Gen strategy, one that aims to catalyze 60 million tonnes of alternative feedstocks by 2033. That goal is ambitious, but it reflects a simple truth: fashion cannot clean up its fibre story with one silver bullet. It needs a wider basket of options, especially if it wants to reduce dependence on forests while building a more resilient supply chain.

Wheat straw belongs in that conversation because it behaves like an industrial material, not a mood board concept. It is agricultural residue, not a fantasy fibre. It can be traced. It can be processed. It can apparently meet performance thresholds. And, crucially, it can be judged against the existing standard, which is whether it can replace wood pulp without making the fabric worse.

That is the real takeaway. Wheat straw is no longer interesting just because it is waste. It is interesting because it may be close enough to what fashion already uses that brands can imagine putting it into volume production without sacrificing the look, hand, and performance their customers expect. If that holds at scale, the next generation of viscose and lyocell may come from fields, not forests.