Indigo – Synthetic

Indigo – Synthetic - Earthues wasn’t intending to buy 100kg of synthetic indigo from Pakistan a few years back. In fact, our contract was for natural Indigofera tinctoria and we received certificates stating that the product we were receiving was 100% natural. However, what we received seemed different. And although it easily made a very strong indigo vat producing the expected blues, we had the product tested and it proved to be synthetic. And, it most likely is Chinese in origin as they have flooded the South Asian market with cheap synthetic indigo putting most natural indigo producers out of business, making it very difficult to find natural indigo there. And so, we are selling this very fine synthetic indigo at our cost; 1/4 of the natural price. Color: Sky Blue to Midnight Blue Earthues recommends using lye (sodium hydroxide) to dissolve the indigo and thiourea dioxide to reduce (remove the oxygen) for the chemically-reduced vat. Sodium carbonate is then used to raise the pH of the vat as necessary.