Suiting up Team Sonnenwagen with more sustainable sportswear created through a three-way partnership
- Huafeng, Cyclone, and Covestro collaborate to equip Team Sonnenwagen with new sportswear.
- The team’s 2025 kit is partly crafted from recycled PET yarns from Cyclone and partly bio-based polyurethane (PU) dispersions from Covestro.
- Innovative HAPTIC® textile coating creates unique 3D color and functional effects while limiting environmental impact.
Team Sonnenwagen Aachen, a solar racing collective from RWTH Aachen and FH Aachen, Germany, is on a mission to advance sustainable mobility solutions and become world champions. This August, the student team will participate in the 2025 Bridgestone World Solar Challenge, a biannual 3,000-kilometer race across the Australian outback. During the five-day event, 50 student teams from around the world will compete with solar vehicles that they must design, assemble, and drive themselves.
Just last week, Team Sonnenwagen unveiled their new solar car, the Aethon, which they will take to this year’s race. However, for the team to secure victory, several factors must align. In addition to the car itself, the team requires suitable apparel. To meet this need, Huafeng, a Chinese textile technology company, will supply Team Sonnenwagen with high-performance sports shoes, shorts, and trousers that offer a reduced CO2 footprint compared to conventional sportswear.**
Reflecting on the longstanding partnership between Huafeng, Cyclone, and Covestro, Dr. Torsten Pohl, Head of Global Textile Coatings at Covestro, said: “The new sports kit looks fantastic! By incorporating our partially bio-based Impranil® CQ PU dispersion into its textile coatings and using recycled yarns from Cyclone, Huafeng has successfully achieved an excellent balance of high performance, aesthetic appeal, and low environmental impact. This collaboration demonstrates that manufacturers can meet the increasing demand for more sustainable sportswear without compromising durability, style, or performance.”
Huafeng created Team Sonnenwagen’s 2025 sports kit using yarns supplied by Cyclone, a yarn manufacturing partner. Cyclone produced these yarns from recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) from plastic bottles collected in Fujian Province, China. Additionally, Cyclone employs a dope-dyeing technique for its yarns, which uses 57% less energy, 77% less water, and generates 51% lower CO2 emissions than traditional dyeing techniques.* The dyed fabric is then finished with Huafeng’s HAPTIC® ink, which contains a partially bio-based PU dispersion supplied by Covestro, Team Sonnenwagen’s core sponsor and supporter since 2017.
To help Team Sonnenwagen stand out on the racetrack, Huafeng embellished its shorts, sports shoes, and trousers with screen-printed designs created using its HAPTIC® ink. Huafeng can create stunning three-dimensional design effects using this ink while reducing environmental impact. This is because Huafeng developed its HAPTIC® textile coating system using the partly bio-based Impranil® CQ DLS/1 resin from Covestro, which has a 38% lower carbon footprint than standard grade Impranil®.** For Team Sonnenwagen, this won’t be the first time it has encountered Covestro products; partly bio-based PU dispersions from Covestro are also used in the textile material that covers the steering wheel in the team’s solar car.
Dr. Thomas Schmidt, Director of Innovation & Creation at Huafeng, commented on the recent collaboration: "By using partly bio-based Impranil® CQ solutions from Covestro, we’re pioneering sustainable textiles with innovations such as HAPTIC® Art ink. This ink formulation delivers a reduced CO2 footprint**, offers extensive customizability, and can be used in high-performance textiles like sportswear.”
The collaboration between Huafeng, Cyclone, and Covestro demonstrates that combining innovative manufacturing with partly recycled fabrics and partly bio-based textile coatings helps manufacturers create more sustainable sportswear while ensuring performance, durability, comfort, and style. With the right equipment and support, Team Sonnenwagen is well prepared to take the pole position in the race this August.
*SGS report from 2021 (Cyclone).
**According to internal calculations.
About Huafeng
Huafeng is a high-tech textile manufacturer with a strong focus on the sports industry and innovative automotive applications. The company employs advanced knitting and weaving technologies and water-saving dyeing techniques to produce high-performance fabrics for footwear and apparel. Additionally, Huafeng is committed to low-environmental-impact innovations and is actively working to develop more sustainable textile supply chains. A key priority for the company is decarbonizing its manufacturing processes through the use of photovoltaic electricity and biomass heat generation. For more information, visit www.huafeng-cn.com.
Huafeng also developed HAPTIC, a 3D textile coating technology that significantly enhances the sustainability and efficiency of shoe production. The HAPTIC Art process enables the creation of unique hand-painted and high-performance 3D designs. To learn more, please visit www.haptic-art.com and www.hapticcoating.com.
About Cyclone
Cyclone is a leading polyester recycling company that produces high-quality rPET yarns for the sports and automotive industries. The company mechanically recycles post-consumer PET bottles and processes textile waste through its dedicated chemical recycling plants. By employing multi-stage cleaning and purification processes, Cyclone can create rPET yarns that match the quality of virgin PET yarns. Additionally, Cyclone optionally dyes its yarns by dope-dying technologies in various colors to minimize its environmental impact without using water. To learn more, visit www.cycloneyarn.com.
About Covestro:
Covestro is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of high-quality polymer materials and their components. With its innovative products, processes and methods, the company helps enhance sustainability and the quality of life in many areas. Covestro supplies customers around the world in key industries such as mobility, building and living, as well as the electrical and electronics sector. In addition, polymers from Covestro are also used in sectors such as sports and leisure, telecommunications and health, as well as in the chemical industry itself.
The company is geared completely to the circular economy. In addition, Covestro aims to achieve climate neutrality for its Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 2035, and the Group’s Scope 3 emissions are also set to be climate neutral by 2050. Covestro generated sales of EUR 14.2 billion in fiscal year 2024. At the end of 2024, the company had 46 production sites worldwide and employed approximately 17,500 people (calculated as full-time equivalents).
Forward-Looking Statements
This news release may contain forward-looking statements based on current assumptions and forecasts made by Covestro AG. Various known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors could lead to material differences between the actual future results, financial situation, development or performance of the company and the estimates given here. These factors include those discussed in Covestro’s public reports which are available at www.covestro.com. The company assumes no liability whatsoever to update these forward-looking statements or to conform them to future events or developments.