From the Sector

The ITA spin-off SA Dynamics has been nominated for the semi-finals of this year’s Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC), one of the world’s most prestigious start-up competitions, held at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

Out of 550 applications from around the world, only 42 teams were accepted to take part in the competition. SA Dynamics impressed the judges with its technology and business model, reaching the semi-finals as one of the top 15 teams.

The RBPC also offered SA Dynamics the opportunity to engage closely with leading international coaches and investors. The insights gained and networks established will strengthen the company’s future development in the long term.

“Making it into the top 15 out of 550 applications and 42 teams at the RBPC is a testament to everything we work towards every day. We are incredibly proud of our team and grateful for every conversation, every challenge and every new connection we made in Houston.”— SA Dynamics Team

“We warmly congratulate SA Dynamics on its outstanding achievement,” emphasises Professor Dr Thomas Gries, Director of ITA. “This excellent result impressively underscores the high quality of our research and teaching at the ITA. We look forward to continuing to support SA Dynamics on its journey.”

Solid Air Dynamics develops bio-based and recyclable high-performance fibres for aerogel-based thermal insulation, thereby driving the transition towards more powerful and sustainable materials, and was the winner of the KUER business plan competition.NRW 2023, won the Techtextil Innovation Award 2024 and runner-up in the RWTH Innovation Award in 2026.

Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, Inc., a world leader in spider silk technology, announced that it has begun processing nearly 1.8 metric tons of recombinant spider silk cocoons into finished reeled silk.

In early April, the Company announced that it had exceeded 1.3 metric tons of cocoon production in March, setting a new production record. Since that announcement, Kraig Labs is now confirming that it produced an additional half ton of cocoons (approximately) that were not included in the in the March report. This brings the Company’s total available cocoon inventory to nearly 1.8 metric tons. The attached image represents less than 4% of the total cocoon production.

Kraig Labs has now initiated the reeling process, converting this inventory into finished reeled silk. This work is currently underway at one of the Company’s production partners and is expected to be completed by the end of the month.

Upon completion of this processing phase, Kraig Labs expects to hold the largest inventory of recombinant spider silk in its history. To the Company’s knowledge, this volume also represents the largest single supply of recombinant spider silk ever to exist.

The finished reeled silk will shortly be available for processing, including twisting into yarns and integration into textile and technical material applications. Kraig Labs plans to make these materials available to targeted markets, including luxury fashion, performance textiles, and industrial applications.

Senior management is currently in Asia overseeing these operations. During this visit, leadership is working directly with production staff to monitor the reeling process, evaluate facility performance, and coordinate with supply chain partners. Management is also advancing the implementation of the Company’s aggressive scale-up strategy. This plan is designed to continue rapidly increasing production output in the months ahead.

“The execution we are seeing across our operations is tracking exactly as we expected,” said Kim Thompson, Founder and CEO of Kraig Labs. “That is a direct result of the considerable groundwork our team has completed over the last three years to put our production infrastructure in place and fine tune our processes in the field. What we are seeing now is preparation translating into consistent, scalable output.”

The Company leadership in biomaterials was recently spotlighted on the cover of the March 2026 issue of National Geographic, highlighting the growing importance and predominance of our work in scaling spider silk production.

EDANA, the international association serving the nonwovens and related industries, released the European annual statistics for 2025, offering a comprehensive picture of the nonwovens industry in Greater Europe. This information shows an overview of the industry’s strength and resilience across the region. 

According to the figures collected and compiled by EDANA, overall nonwovens production in Europe declined by around 2.2% in 2025, reaching 2,919,000 tonnes. 

Jacques Prigneaux, EDANA’s Market Analysis and Economic Affairs Director, stated: “Despite the negative impact of several drivers affecting the nonwovens industry, the slowdown in demand across some key market segments, and an increasing competition from abroad, the European nonwovens industry has once again demonstrated its strength, resilience, flexibility and ability to innovate.” 

Diverging trends were observed across European countries and among the various nonwovens production processes. Total spunmelt output decreased by 3.3%, while drylaid technologies production remained nearly stable at -0.7%. Limited growths were recorded in hydroentanglement and needle-punched bonding processes, at +0.1% and +0.8%, respectively. 

The hygiene market—still the main end-use for nonwovens by volume—declined by 2.7% in 2025, following growth of 1.7% in 2024. This decrease was mainly driven by developments in the baby diaper market. 

Significant changes in tonnage for nonwovens in 2025 were also seen in sales of roll goods for personal care wipes (+0.9%), building and roofing (-6.8%), automotive interiors (-0.9%), and upholstery (-7.1%). However, these figures do not take into account specific grammage developments, which are available to EDANA members through surface area data. 

Carpets and upholstery fabrics from ships and hotels have significant recycling potential that is not currently being fully utilised. A Danish partnership aims to change that.

Many offices, hotels, ships and other public spaces are fitted with carpets and upholstery fabrics made from wool-nylon blends. The combination of materials gives the products a very long lifespan, but complicates the recycling process when they are replaced. Manufacturers, researchers and knowledge partners have joined forces in the UnBlend partnership, which aims to make textiles easier to reuse and recycle.

Aiming to extend the lifespan of wool-nylon textiles
Tons of high-quality carpets and upholstery fabrics go up in smoke when offices, hotels, ships, libraries, theatres and other public spaces refurbish their interiors. In the EU alone, an estimated 1.6 million tonnes of carpets are disposed of every year, and the vast majority are incinerated or end up in landfill.

The challenge with carpets and upholstery fabrics is that the textiles often consist of complex blended materials such as wool and nylon, which are currently difficult to recycle, even though the material quality is high. It’s a shame, says Business Manager Julie Brender Trads from Danish Technological Institute, who heads the UnBlend partnership:

– Wool-nylon blends are high-quality materials that are easily overlooked because they make up only a small part of the total textile stream. On the other hand, it is a large and uniform textile stream that can be collected when a hotel or ship changes its interior or undergoes renovation. A cruise ship can easily be covered with enough carpet to cover 5–10 football pitches. These large quantities are an advantage when the ambition is large-scale recycling.

From circular design to unique products
UnBlend takes a holistic approach to the challenge of wool-nylon blends. Rather than focusing solely on a single technical solution, the project partners are working in parallel on three tracks: better design, creative reuse and recycling technologies.

The design track explores how products can be constructed more intelligently, for example using fewer types of adhesive and more appropriate material combinations, facilitating later disassembly and recycling among other things. At the same time, the partners are experimenting with reusing and redesigning textile scraps into unique products. Finally, existing and new recycling technologies are being tested to find effective methods for separating wool and nylon, so that the two fibres can be recycled separately and returned to the cycle.

– If we succeed in separating wool and nylon effectively, we can ensure the continuous recycling of high-quality materials. By recycling materials in a closed loop, we can simultaneously reduce the environmental impact significantly compared to wool and nylon produced from new raw materials, says Jeppe Emil Mogensen, Design Director at the textile company Gabriel.

Interdisciplinary collaboration as a prerequisite
The UnBlend partnership was established by Danish Technological Institute, which has brought together textile manufacturers (Gabriel, Dansk Wilton, SheWorks), researchers and knowledge partners (DTU and Danish Technological Institute) and designers (Design School Kolding).

– For many years, we have been working in various ways on solutions within circularity and recycling, but there is a lack of commercial solutions for our type of material composition. That is why it is relevant for us to be part of UnBlend, which brings together many areas of expertise and enables new solutions, says Lone Ditmer, CEO at Dansk Wilton, a global manufacturer of carpets for the international hospitality industry.

About UnBlend
UnBlend is supported by just under DKK 11 million from TRACE and will run for two years. TRACE is a mission-driven research and innovation partnership working to create a circular economy for plastics and textiles by 2050.

Partners: Gabriel, SheWorks, Dansk Wilton, DTU, Design School Kolding and the Danish Technological Institute.

Wool-nylon blends are currently used in large quantities on cruise ships, in hotels, offices and public buildings, particularly in carpets and furniture upholstery. Yet tonnes of high-quality carpets and furniture textiles are sent for incineration or landfill when interiors are replaced.

Fashion for Good launched the Mass Balance Demonstrator project, a collaborative industry initiative to implement and scale the mass balance attribution (MBA) chain-of-custody model for biomass-attributed PET in textile applications. The project represents a concrete step toward accelerating brand-driven decarbonisation across the apparel value chain.

While the portfolio of both preferred existing and next-generation materials offers opportunities for decarbonising the apparel industry, biosynthetics currently represent only a small fraction in material projections for 2030. The reality is that the dedicated commercial scale infrastructure required for biosynthetic materials is not yet fully developed, keeping production volumes prohibitively low and costs too high for widespread industry transition, despite their validated technical performance.

Borrowed from industries such as renewable energy and sustainable wood and paper, the mass balance attribution is a chain-of-custody model which allows renewable and fossil-based feedstocks to be physically mixed. It tracks how much renewable input entered the system and proportionally allocates that amount to the outputs, verified through audits and certification bodies. 

HOW DOES MASS BALANCE ATTRIBUTION (MBA) WORK
A chemical manufacturer introduces renewable feedstocks (such as agricultural residues or used cooking oil) into a production system that also processes fossil-based feedstocks. These feedstocks move through the same infrastructure and chemical processes, and by the time they become resin, they are chemically indistinguishable. The amount of renewable feedstock entering the system is carefully measured and recorded through a verified accounting system, creating a record of renewable input while accounting for process losses and conversion factors.

That accounted input is then allocated to specific products using mass balance principles. If 30% of the feedstock entering the system is renewable, a corresponding share of the output can carry a renewable attribution. In this project, this will be the biomass-attributed polyester (PET) but it could also be used for other fibres such as nylon. This does not necessarily mean each product physically contains renewable content; rather, the claim reflects the share of renewable input assigned to that product. Crucially, the system is strictly controlled: producers cannot allocate more renewable attribution than the amount of renewable feedstock entering the system, and once attributed, those certified attributes cannot be counted again elsewhere.

“We are at a point where the industry wants to move and adopt biosynthetics, but the production frameworks and commercial infrastructure haven’t caught up. The Mass Balance Demonstrator project is about closing that gap: building the impact and commercial evidence, the blueprint, and the feedback loops that will allow the MBA model to scale with integrity.” Katrin Ley, Managing Director at Fashion for Good. 

THE GOALS OF THE PROJECT
The Mass Balance Demonstrator project, an initiative led by Fashion for Good, brings together BESTSELLER, Beyond Yoga (Levi Strauss & Co.), ON, Paradise Textiles, Environmental Resources Management (ERM), Indorama Ventures, ISCC, UPM Biochemicals, and Textile Exchange. The consortium is designed not only to demonstrate what is possible today, but to generate insights that the wider industry can build on now and in the future.

“Polyester is our second biggest fiber by volume in BESTSELLER, which means we are continuously investigating improvements in this category. By taking part in this project we as a company are building experience within mass balance attribution and bio-attributed polyester. Hopefully, as we collaborate with other great partners, this can initiate pathways that can support scaling of renewable feedstocks (or inputs) going forward.” Anders Schorling Overgård, Material Research Lead at BESTSELLER

At its core, the project adopts and implements the mass balance attribution chain-of-custody model to enable the production of biomass-attributed PET for textile applications, demonstrating that existing manufacturing systems can integrate renewable feedstocks today. The project is structured around four interconnected objectives:

• Producing biomass-attributed materials: the project will physically produce biomass-attributed resin and yarns, generating real-world output that matches performance parity.
• Quantifying the climate impact: a comprehensive cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions model will be developed for the produced materials, delivering science-based insights into their decarbonisation potential and overall environmental footprint.
• Developing a blueprint for industry scale-up: the project will deliver a practical roadmap for scaling biomass-attributed PET in the apparel sector, identifying key supply chain actors, assessing lifecycle accounting approaches for different chain-of-custody models, and evaluating the techno-economic feasibility of market deployment.
• Informing climate frameworks and industry standards: insights from the project will be shared with climate initiatives and standard-setting bodies to help credible guidance on mass balance attribution.