MADRID (Reuters) - Zara owner Inditex has bought a stake in the U.S.-based sustainable agriculture startup Galy as part of its strategy to invest in the sustainable economy, its CEO, Oscar Garcia Maceiras, said on Tuesday.
"Today, we are disclosing that we have entered the capital of Galy, a startup founded in 2019 in the U.S., which is developing an innovative process to produce cotton in laboratories from plant cells," Garcia Maceiras told shareholders during the company's annual assembly.
Zara's parent company, which has pledged to halve emissions in its entire chain by 2030, in 2022 invested in Circ, another U.S. firm focused on textile-to-textile recycling, and signed agreements with producers of recycled fibres.
The investments should help Inditex meet its commitment to have 40% of its fibres coming from conventional recycling and 25% from so-called next-generation materials by the end of the decade.
The Inditex chief did not provide details on the size of the company's stake in Galy.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is among Galy's stakeholders, according to the startup's website.
During the annual meeting, some Inditex investors called for more transparency, urging the world's largest-listed fashion retailer to make the list of its suppliers public as well as the extent of its use of air cargo transport.
Garcia Maceiras said the company shared "detailed information about the supply chain with some stakeholders who have asked us to do so".
However, he did not clarify whether Inditex planned to publish the list of its top factories, as requested by Dutch pension fund Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP during the meeting.
Some of Zara's competitors, such as H&M, have made their full list of suppliers public.
Barbara Setti, of the Ethical Finance Foundation and the European Shareholders for Change network, asked Inditex for data on cargo flights and their emissions.
Garcia Maceiras said that the company used air transport when it was unavoidable, mainly on trans-oceanic routes where land or sea transport was not possible or efficient.
(Reporting by Corina Pons and Inti Landauro; Editing by David Latona and Louise Heavens)