Ecofoot Vowed 70% Less Dye Water; EIC Accelerator Report Says 18%

Dyeing cotton with reactive dyes is cheap and colourfast, but part of the dye reacts with water instead of the fibre, and that hydrolysed dye has to be rinsed out over many hot baths. Ecofoot, a spin-off of the University of Minho in Guimarães, said it had a compound that stopped the problem at the source. Its product page in 2021 promised to save "an estimate of 70% of the total water used, 60% of the total energy consumed and 50% of the total process time" for medium to dark colours, according to an archived copy of the page. The University of Minho repeated the same three figures when it announced Ecofoot's EIC award in July 2020.

The EIC Accelerator pilot paid for the test. In the May 2020 cut-off, run under a Green Deal topic, Ecofoot was selected for a grant of €1,100,750 towards a €1,572,500 project, according to CORDIS. When the project ended in March 2023, its final report gave average savings of 67% energy, 18% water and 22% time. Less than a year later, Ecofoot filed for its own insolvency.

What Happened to Ecofoot

Ecofoot's insolvency case is closed and one register, eInforma, lists it as extinct. The Portuguese courts' insolvency notices on Citius (search NIF 510252362) show that the company filed for its own insolvency at the commercial court in Guimarães on 22 March 2024 (case 2021/24.9T8GMR). The declaration of insolvency was published on 4 April 2024, a proposal for the final distribution to creditors on 5 March 2025, and the closure of the case on 15 July 2025. The creditors named in the notices include IAPMEI, Portugal's public agency for competitiveness and innovation, and the association that runs the Porto Science and Technology Park. Under article 234(3) of the Portuguese insolvency code, a company "considera-se extinta" (is deemed extinct) once the closure of the case after the final distribution is registered, as the text of the code states.

The company registers agree on the insolvency but label the end state differently. eInforma, the Informa D&B directory, lists the company as "ECOFOOT, S.A. (EXTINTA)". Racius still shows the name "Ecofoot, S.A. - Em Liquidação" (in liquidation) and records two insolvency process entries in July 2025. Neither register shows filed accounts after 2020 for free.

The website went with it. The Wayback Machine shows the full Ecofoot site still online in April 2024, after the insolvency filing, and a hosting provider's parking page by January 2025. In October 2026 ecofoot.pt shows a domain marketplace page.

The Technology: Fewer Rinses After Reactive Dyeing

Reactive dyes bond chemically with cotton, which makes them fast to washing. The catch is that some of the dye reacts with the water in the bath instead, and this hydrolysed dye sticks loosely to the fabric. Dyehouses remove it with repeated rinses and soaping, often near the boil. Ecofoot's 2021 product page said the state of the art needed "8-10 washes for medium to dark colours, often at temperatures up to 100ºC", and that its product cut this to "4-6 rinses at a maximum temperature of 60ºC", in conventional machines.

How the product works was described in different ways over the years. In 2017 the company's website sold H2COLOR as dyes in their own right: reactive dyes "immobilized and encapsulated in the nanopores of silica particles", protected from hydrolysis until the particles broke down in the bath. By the EIC project, H2COLOR was an auxiliary added to standard dyeing. The CORDIS objective calls it "a patented composition comprising nanoparticles that combine with the reactive dyes", the University of Minho describes "a polymeric layer" that forms between dye and fibre and then decomposes, and the 2021 product page says it "complexes with the hydrolyzed dye", releasing "highly anionic products during washing-off". The company's about page said a European patent on "reactive hybrid nanopigments" was granted to Ecofoot in 2019; its number is not given there and could not be verified for this article.

The established alternative is a better washing-off agent applied after dyeing. Ecofoot's own report names the main rival: cationic washing-off agents, which it says save "energy, water, and time" but cause spots and stains when used at the high doses needed for black and navy. Ecofoot's pitch was that a preventive product beats a remedy, especially on the darkest shades.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The EIC award was Ecofoot's second Horizon 2020 grant. A €50,000 SME Instrument Phase 1 grant funded a feasibility study for H2COLOR-AUX from September to December 2019, according to CORDIS. Its report said Ecofoot had decided to outsource manufacturing to textile chemical producers, would sell first in Europe and then in Asia, and expected "revenues of €48M in year 5" and 35 employees five years after commercialisation.

The European Commission's list of the May 2020 EIC Accelerator pilot winners names ECOFOOT of Guimarães, with the H2COLOR-AUX proposal and grant-only funding; no other company is listed for the project. The University of Minho said it was the only Portuguese company among 64 SMEs in 17 countries that shared €307 million in that round. The grant agreement was signed on 8 September 2020, and the project, renamed H2COLOR, ran from 1 October 2020 to 31 March 2023.

CORDIS sets out the plan: produce 24 tons of H2COLOR for in-house validation, test it with three dyehouses, two in Portugal and one in Italy, and bring the product "closer to commercial launch". The final report says a new production facility was set up at a new location and that problems with product homogeneity and stability were solved. Trials ran at the three companies that had signed letters of intent: Perfil Cromático in Portugal and TF 2000 in Italy for knitwear, and Mundotêxtil in Portugal for towels. The report is frank about the results. At Mundotêxtil, a competing low-temperature cationic washing product had arrived first during the 2022 energy crisis and proved "a very strong competition due to lower cost than that we were able to propose". At TF 2000, one visit produced one report, on black. Data from another 10 knitwear companies were added, and the averages came to 67% energy, 18% water and 22% time.

1. New production facilityDeliveredSet up and optimised, per the final report.
2. 12-month trials at three dyehousesPartly deliveredTrials at all three; only one report on black from Italy.
3. 24 tons produced for validationNot reportedNo volume stated in any public source.
4. 70% water savingMissed18% on average in Deliverable 2.1.
5. Energy savingDelivered67% on average, above the 60% claimed.
6. Commercial launchNot deliveredNo customer announced; insolvency in 2024.

The project closed on schedule, and the energy result is real progress on the most expensive part of the rinse. But the water saving that headlined the pitch shrank to about a quarter of the promise, the one direct comparison with a cheaper rival went against Ecofoot, and no dyehouse has been named as a paying customer. The report says Ecofoot booked a stand at ITMA, the textile machinery fair, in Milan in June 2023; whether it exhibited could not be confirmed.

After the Grant

Public traces of commercial activity are thin. In June 2022 chief executive Jaime Gomes gave a webinar on the technology for the Society of Dyers and Colourists, also announced by Textile World, covering case study results from exhaust and pad-batch dyeing and digital printing inks with hybrid nanopigments. Racius records a capital increase in August 2022. No equity round, investor or customer contract was found in news searches, and Ecofoot is not among the 319 companies on the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, checked across all 16 pages in October 2026, which is consistent with its grant-only award.

Staff numbers, revenue and losses could not be verified: the free register pages show no figures, and the last balance sheet listed by Racius is for 2020. How much of the grant was paid out, and whether any was recovered in the insolvency, is not public.

Why Europe Should Care

Water and chemicals in textile finishing remain a European policy concern. The Commission's EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles, adopted on 30 March 2022, ranks textiles third among consumption areas for water and land use and wants products on the EU market to be free of hazardous substances by 2030. A dyeing aid made in northern Portugal, one of Europe's remaining textile clusters, fitted that agenda and the Green Deal topic under which it was funded. Ecofoot's report itself shows the hard part: a cheaper rinse agent already on the market was good enough for at least one dyehouse.

The Verdict

Ecofoot and its former insolvency administrator have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, EU project data and archived company statements, linked throughout.