"How a textile company became a development powerhouse", 7 Jan 2016

As the international community increasingly calls on business to help finance…Sustainable Development Goals, the private sector has questions of its own…‘What exactly is the market opportunity?’ Vestergaard…transformed itself…by tackling some of the world’s most pressing problems…What they’ve proven…is that in the long term, doing good is…good business…[T]he company, which focuses on providing solutions to key development challenges…has increased its revenue 50 times…[I]ncreasing competition…drove the team to start thinking about value-added textiles. The first result was long-lasting insecticide-treated mosquito bed nets, followed by a nylon cloth capable of filtering guinea worm from water…Those early products sparked Vestergaard’s three focus areas…to work on public health, water and food security…The early guinea worm filter…led to the development of LifeStraw, a hollow fiber membrane filter that takes even the dirtiest water and makes it safe to drink…The model of using developed world sales to finance related products or projects in developing countries seems to be on the rise…[Also refers to Nike]