Danish startup Rodinia Generation said it has secured 4 million euros ($4.5 million) to scale its on-demand manufacturing pilot, which uses automation to produce clothes in Europe at the same cost as Asia.

The company said in a statement on Monday that the investment was led by early-stage venture capital climate-tech investor Vitamin°C, reflecting a vote of confidence for its patented O-factory technology.

The technology, which is capable of handling complex on-demand production at scale, promises EU brands a more sustainable and secure supply of clothes for a total cost that is comparable with outsourcing production to Asia.

Bringing the supply closer to the end customers means brands would only need up to 48 hours of lead time for production, the startup said on its official website, as opposed to having to wait for six months for the products to be ready in an Asian country.

It’s a pitch that won the financial backing of Vitamin°C, a female-led early-stage venture fund that invests in climate mitigation and adaptation. It has dual headquarters in Zurich and San Francisco.

“Rodinia is tackling one of the largest industries in the world with a fundamentally different manufacturing model,” said Nathalie Moral, founding partner at Vitamin°C.

“What attracted us is not sustainability alone, but the potential to change the economics of apparel production by combining automation, flexibility and local manufacturing at commercial scale,” she said.

Rodinia said it is becoming more difficult for the industry to automate fashion production because it no longer simply manufactures large quantities of identical products. Brands, it said, needs to be flexible and produce “thousands of styles.”

Its on-demand manufacturing technology, however, is built to handle this level of complexity, combining proprietary software and machinery so production settings can adapt as the digital input of each garment changes.

“We have demonstrated in Copenhagen that a single O-factory line can produce 80 percent of clothing categories, including evening dresses, formal shirts, football tees, swimwear and childrenswear, just to mention a few of the categories that have already achieved competitive margins,” said Trine Young, founder and CEO of Rodinia Generation.

She said the investment allows the startup to increase production capacity with the opening of an industrial scale O-factory in Portugal.

“The brands that produce with us have no need to predict what will sell months in advance. They also don’t need to produce at high volumes to reach better unit economics,” said Young.

“They can react to demand in days instead of months, sell more at full price and manage inventory and cash much more efficiently—and on top of all this, they can do so with a much lower environmental footprint,” she added.

Rodinia said it’s O-factory is designed to reduce carbon emissions by approximately 40 percent per garment on average, while eliminating the use of water altogether from its production process.

An O-factory that produces the equivalent of half the annual garment volume of a large fast-fashion brand can save approximately 100 billion liters of water and one million tonnes of carbon emissions, based on the startup’s impact calculations.

In the long term, the startup is envisioning a global network of O-factories that would bring manufacturing closer to the major markets of fashion brands.

“By replicating flexible production capacity across different locations, we are creating the foundation for a new manufacturing infrastructure for the global apparel industry,” Young said.