Focus Area

Sports & leisure

Materials form the fabric of our lives. To meet ambitious consumer preferences, we focus on rapid production and luxurious, comfortable quality. Our next-generation solutions will take precision, sustainability, and design freedom even further for manufacturers and consumers alike.
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Challenge: Providing comfort and style with a clear conscience

More and more people are realizing that the fast fashion of the past cannot be a model for today – including when it comes to sportswear. They’re looking for beautiful, functional, and individualized sportswear that goes easy on natural resources and is produced in a more socially responsible way. Manufacturers face the challenge of responding to this need while streamlining and digitalizing their production processes. With our high-tech materials, we’re helping to realize the vision of an inspiring, more sustainable sports & leisure industry.

Key Drivers

  • Reducing waste at the end-of-life phase

    Reducing waste at the end-of-life phase

    Manufacturers are searching for material mixes that are easier to recycle, factoring the end-of-life phase into product development from the beginning.

  • More precise production processes

    More precise production processes

    Textile manufacturers will need to use state-of-the-art digital technologies to deliver on-point precision, and reduce both process steps and waste.

  • End-consumer needs and trends

    End-consumer needs and trends

    It’s not enough to understand your direct customer – successful players monitor the entire value chain to manage an early response to emerging trends.

Status: Future-oriented creativity from head to toe

When choosing their sportswear, consumers expect maximum performance, comfort, and functionality. But they expect this to come with as little harm to our environment as possible – particularly those who enjoy outdoor sports. 

Luckily, our INSQIN® technology combines both characteristics seamlessly. Functional clothing made with INSQIN® is characterized by excellent waterproofness. This is achieved by two layers of coating that are waterborne instead of solvent-based. Together with up to 56% renewable content, this can reduce the garment’s overall carbon footprint. And manufacturers can easily adapt the coating’s breathability and water resistance to its end-use, whether that’s in jackets, caps, gloves, backpacks, or sports shoes. INSQIN® can even be 2D printed onto recycled material, without loss of durability, touch, or feel.

Of course, to meet these ambitious consumer needs, sports & leisure manufacturers need to produce more and more quickly. This makes 2D digital printing an especially valuable technology. Products like Desmomelt® U – our hot-melt adhesives for automated application – reduce the processing steps and waste production associated with manual application, particularly for shoe manufacturers.

Facts & figures

  • A fast-moving market

    A fast-moving market

    The global activewear market is expected to grow at a compound rate of 5.4% per year between 2024 and 2032. ¹

  • Tops and t-shirts on top

    Tops and t-shirts on top

    The largest product segment within sportswear is tops and t-shirts, with a global market share of around 42.67% in 2023. ²

  • A responsibility to reduce emissions

    A responsibility to reduce emissions

    The apparel industry’s contribution to global GHG emissions has been estimated at 2-8% of the total. ³

Next: Greener fashion and high-tech wearables

The transition from fast fashion to greener fashion has only just begun. Together with our partners, we will further expand our efforts to create the more sustainable fashion concepts of the future. In addition, we’re intensifying our research and development activities in novel, high-tech lifestyle components such as wearables and goggles. Not least thanks to functional coatings like antifog and polarization films, these can offer real added value for end-consumers around the globe.

Hands-on solutions

Sports & leisure

  • Case study

    Waterborne & vegan: More sustainable synthetic textile coatings

    Explore how we pioneered a vegan waterborne synthetic coating system with Trans-Textil, to contribute to a more sustainable future for the textile industry.

  • Case study

    More sustainable textile printing with Covestro & KRONOS

    Covestro & KRONOS: More sustainable textile production with digital inkjet printing. Find out more about their white ink innovation for direct-to-foil printing!

  • Case study

    More sustainable textiles for Team Sonnenwagen

    Explore how Covestro, Huafeng, and Cyclone support Team Sonnenwagen with partly bio-based and recycled textile materials for more sustainable sportswear.

  • Story

    More sustainable textiles 

    We supply the textiles industry with more sustainable textile coatings materials for a carbon-neutral fabric future!

  • Story

    Desmomelt®U adhesives 

    Covestro offers starting formulations for printable adhesives based on Desmomelt® U for automated application on textiles. 

  • Case study

    INSQIN® and HAPTIC®

    Partly bio-based INSQIN® PU is an ink binder in HAPTIC® printing on recycled mesh in sports shoes, cutting the CO₂ footprint.

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In the meantime, feel free to discover our innovative material solutions!

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