Name: lisa clarke
Message: who is the manufacter of PROCION MX Dyes? 

Do you mean to ask who owns the Procion brand name, or who manufactures the dichlorotriazine dyes commonly sold to us under the name Procion MX? The answers are not necessarily the same.

The first dye in the Procion MX series was originally introduced by ICI in 1956. The Procion name has been owned by several companies through the years, including BASF and Zeneca; the current owner of the name is DyStar.

The patents have since expired on the Procion dyes, so the same dyes are now available as generics, manufactured by other companies in addition to DyStar. We do not buy dyes direct from the manufacturers, who sell large lots of dye in large barrels; we rely on dye retailers to repackage and in some cases prepare proprietary mixtures of different colors of Procion MX dyes, selling them in much more convenient small packaging, in amounts ranging from 1/3 ounce to 5 pounds. It appears that many of the dyes sold by art and crafts suppliers under the name "Procion MX" are actually manufactured by companies other than Dystar, companies which do not have any right to the name "Procion". You will not find it easy to determine whether this is in fact true for any particular case, however. It is always a secret where any particular retailer buys their dyes, though you may be able to get someone who works for one supplier to speculate about the manufacturers from whom their competitors at other companies buy dye. 

In recent years we've seen a great many problems with quality of one particular fuchsia dye, which is red MX-8B, or Colour Index reactive red 11; some lots of this dye are less fresh than others and more apt to fail to dissolve completely, or even to precipitate out after having been dissolved in water. This might have something to do with the introduction of cheaper generic dyes, or it might be a coincidence. The biggest resulting problem comes when a dye retailer uses a bad batch of fuchsia to prepare mixed colors, which then may produce tiny red dots on the dyed fabric if every undissolved speck of dye is not successfully filtered out before use.

You can find a large number of manufacturers of the dichlorotraizine dyes via a web search; do a search for 'reactive dyes manufacturers' (without the quotes), and look for "cold type" or "M type" dyes. To find the generic Colour Index names for the various dichlorotriazine dyes, see my table of "Which Procion MX colors are pure, and which mixtures?". You can then search for a manufacturer for that dye by using its generic name, e.g. 'reactive red 2' (with the quotes).

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