From the Sector

NCTO President and CEO Kim Glas testified at a hearing on “Supporting U.S. Workers, Businesses, and the Environment in the Face of Unfair Chinese Trade Practices” before the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee.

In written testimony submitted to the committee, Glas outlines China’s rise to dominance of global textile and apparel production and its adverse impact on the U.S. textile industry, details ways to strengthen onshoring and nearshoring of supply chains, and provides recommendations on the critical policies needed to address these illegal trade practices and rectify inequities.

“China holds the dubious distinction of being the world’s leading purveyor of illegal trade practices that are designed to unfairly bolster a blatantly export-oriented economy,” NCTO President and CEO Kim Glas says. “These predatory practices take many forms, from macroeconomic policies that grant across-the-board advantages to their manufacturers, to industry specific programs intended to dominate global markets in targeted areas. The U.S. textile industry has been a longstanding victim of China’s predatory export practices.”

“China’s virtually unlimited and unrealistic pricing power coupled with its subsidies and lack of enforceable labor and environmental standards strips benefits and undermines policy objectives throughout the U.S. free trade and preference program structure,” Glas further notes.

“A program of maximum pressure must be developed and fully enforced to reconfigure textile and apparel sourcing patterns that currently place an unhealthy and heavily weighted dependance on China,” Glas adds. “With a strong trade policy holding China accountable, the opportunities are ripe to unlock further domestic and regional investment to bolster this critical textile and apparel production chain because of the important rules of origin for this sector.  We can nearshore more production, help address the migration crisis, and assist in addressing the urgent issue of climate change and create a win-win-win for workers in the United States, workers in the region, and consumers.”

Glas outlines key policy recommendations to the committee, including:

• Enact tax incentives and other targeted critical investments to strengthen Western Hemisphere trade relationships and re-shore manufacturing
• Close the Section 321 De Minimis Tariff Loophole
• Step up enforcement of forced labor of Uyghurs and others in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR)
• Firmly maintain Section 301 penalty duties on China for finished textiles and apparel products
• Immediately pass the MTB to help manufacturers with a limited list of critical inputs not made in the U.S. and review/close the mechanism in the MTB renewal which allows for finished products
• Strengthen buy-American practices for PPE and other essential products
• Block expansion of the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) to include textile and apparel products
• Use trade enforcement in free trade agreements to mitigate transshipment schemes by unscrupulous importers seeking to illegally circumvent duties

Koketa, a brand of premium womenswear based in Peru, has begun sampling leggings, undergarments and workout wear featuring Acteev® Protect fabric. Produced by U.S. manufacturer Ascend Performance Materials, Acteev incorporates the odor-fighting and mildew-destroying antimicrobial benefits of zinc ions embedded into the matrix of superior nylon yarns and fabrics.

“When it comes to what’s closest to your most vulnerable skin, being safe and sanitary is a top priority,” said Juan Daniel Del Carpio, commercial director for Koketa. “The Koketa woman wants beauty, comfort and protection, and a partnership with Acteev makes it easier than ever for us to deliver all three.”

Koketa garments with Acteev feature Koketa’s signature innovative styles, including unique knit patterns, on-trend colors and flattering silhouettes. The Acteev fabric is buttery-soft and breathable yet long-lasting and resistant to pilling.

Additionally, clothing made with Acteev is resistant to unwanted odors, keeping garments as fresh after 100 washes as they are on day one. The active ingredient – labeled safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration – targets the bacteria and microbes that can cause odor, mildew and discoloration.

“Zinc is nature’s safeguard,” said Juan Toro, global principal business development leader for Acteev in the Americas. “It is a mineral needed for human health, and we have harnessed its power to protect the garments in a natural, sustainable way.”

International technology group ANDRITZ will present its innovative nonwovens and textile technologies at the booth of its Indian representative PRN Techtex at Techtextil India 2021 in Mumbai, India, from November 25 to 27, 2021. A special focus will lie on its technologies for air-through bonding, needlepunch, textile recycling, and processes for biodegradable wipes, like spunlace and WetlaceTM.

Air-through Bonding
Air-through-bonding lines are the preferred choice for producing nonwovens with the best quality of softness and bulk for acquisition distribution layers, top sheets, and back-sheet products. With ANDRITZ carding machines and the new flat belt oven, customers benefit from high-performance fabrics from 16 to 80 gsm, produced with bicomponent fibers. Several Chinese customers have already invested in ANDRITZ aXcess carding machines, which provide perfect web uniformity. In addition, the CETI (European Center for Innovative Textiles) in Lille, France, has installed an air-through-bonding oven from ANDRITZ.

Textil-recycling Technologies
Recently, ANDRITZ acquired Laroche SAS, a leading supplier of fiber processing technologies such as opening, blending, dosing, airlay web forming, textile waste recycling, and decortication of bast fibers. The product portfolio further complements and increases the ANDRITZ Nonwoven product range. One focus of this product range lies on complete recycling lines for post-consumer and industrial textile waste to produce fibers for re-spinning and/or nonwoven end uses.

Needlepunch Technologies
Driven by the dynamic market for durable nonwovens, ANDRITZ has developed an elliptical pre-cylinder tacker – the PA3000. With this modern machine, ANDRITZ is responding to customer demands for higher capacities and lighter products. The PA3000 is an optimized cylinder pre-needleloom, which offers greater speeds and widths and has been specially developed for lighter webs. There is no friction between the web and the rolls, and there are no issues with the visual appearance.

ANDRITZ is also focusing on its latest needling technology for producing veloured felts, mainly for applications in the automotive industry.

In addition, ANDRITZ will be presenting the next generation of its batt-forming technology, the ProWin system. ProWin is a further development of ProDynTM and ProWidTM, which have achieved a high level of acceptance on the market with around 200 systems installed. This technology improves the current weight-profiling options and increases the actual production capacity.

Production of Bio-Wipes
For many years now, ANDRITZ has offered different nonwoven processes, such as spunlace and Wetlace, with one goal in mind: reduction and elimination of plastic raw materials while maintaining the high quality of the desired product properties. The latest development in this field is the ANDRITZ neXline wetlace CP line. This is a fully engineered production line, combining the benefits of wetlaid and drylaid technologies to produce a new generation of biodegradable wipes. This process achieves high performance entirely with plastic-free raw materials. The added benefit of using a blend of fibers, like wood pulp, short-cut cellulosic fibers, viscose, cotton, hemp, bamboo, or linen, without chemical additives, results in a 100% sustainable fabric.

• ADNOC and Borealis confirm final investment agreement to build Borouge 4 in Ruwais, United Arab Emirates (UAE), which will produce 1.4 million tons of polyethylene per annum
• Expansion project includes construction of a 1.5 million tonnes ethane cracker, two state-of-the-art Borstar® polyethylene plants and a cross-linked polyethylene plant
• Borouge 4 will meet growing customer demand across the Middle East, Africa and Asia with differentiated polyolefin solutions in energy, infrastructure, and advanced packaging
• New facility will benefit from industry-leading technologies to significantly improve energy efficiency and lower emissions, with carbon capture study underway
• Upon expansion, Borouge will be the world's largest single-site polyolefin complex and will supply feedstock to TA'ZIZ Industrial Chemicals Zone Body

ADNOC and Borealis AG signed an USD 6.2 billion investment agreement to build the fourth Borouge facility – Borouge 4 – at the polyolefin manufacturing complex in Ruwais, United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The world-scale expansion confirms both partners’ commitment to the growth of Borouge and to support chemical production, and advanced manufacturing and industry in Ruwais, a key pillar of Abu Dhabi and the UAE’s technology, innovation and industrial development strategy. Borouge produces crucial industrial raw materials, which are exported to customers globally and used by local companies, boosting local industrial supply chains and enhancing In-Country Value.

Borouge 4 will capitalize on the projected growth in customer demand for polyolefins, driven by their use in manufactured products in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The facility will also enable the next phase of growth at the Ruwais Industrial Complex by supplying feedstock to the TA’ZIZ Industrial Chemicals Zone.

Borouge 4 will have an industry-leading focus on sustainability leveraging the capabilities of both shareholders. The facility will utilize Borealis’ proprietary Borstar technology, to produce a product portfolio focused on durable applications for energy, infrastructure, advanced packaging, and agriculture sectors. This unique technology, in combination with hexene co-monomer, will enable the production of advanced packaging grades with up to 50% recycled polyethylene content.

Subject to an in-depth study, a Carbon Capture unit that would reduce CO2 emissions by 80% could also be operational in time for Borouge 4’s start-up. The facility is also designed to capitalize on ADNOC’s recent initiatives on clean energy, decarbonizing its power supply through access to Abu Dhabi’s clean power sources. These initiatives are aligned with the UAE Net Zero by 2050 Strategic Initiative.

The first Borouge facility, producing 450,000 tons of polyethylene per annum was commissioned in 2001. Borouge 2 and Borouge 3 took capacity to 2 million tons and 4.5 million tons of polyethylene and polypropylene per annum in 2010 and 2014 respectively.  Borouge 4 will boost the company’s annual polyolefin production to 6.4 million tons, making Borouge one of the world’s largest single-site polyolefin facilities.

The new Borouge 4 facility will comprise:

• An ethane cracker, with 1.5 million tons ethylene output per annum, which will be the fourth cracker in Borouge’s integrated petrochemical complex in Ruwais
• Two additional Borstar® polyethylene (PE) plants, each with 700 thousand tons per annum capacity, using state-of-the-art Borealis Borstar third generation (3G) technology
• A cross-linked PE (XLPE) plant of 100 thousand tons per annum capacity.
• A hexene-1 unit, which will produce co-monomers for certain grades of polyethylene.

• Sales increase 8.8% to €743.5 million compared to the same period of the previous year
• EBITDApre improves by 59.1% to €108.5 million
• Despite burdens from higher raw material and energy prices, stable revenue and earnings expected for Q4 2021

Following consolidated sales of €241.5 million in Q1 2021 and €255.2 million in Q2 2021, Q3 2021 confirms SGL Carbon's encouraging sales performance with €246.8 million. Due to increasing demand from almost all market segments, Group sales increased to a total of €743.5 million in the first nine months of the fiscal year (9M 2020: €683.5 million). This corresponds to an increase of 8.8% compared to the same period of the previous year.

Almost all business units contributed to the positive sales development. As largest business unit with a 44.7% share of Group sales, Graphite Solutions (GS) contributed €332.7 million to Group sales in the first nine months of 2021 (9M 2020: €308.0 million). The sales increase of 8.0% is based in particular on the positive development of the important market segments Semiconductor & LED as well as Automotive & Transportation. The business units Carbon Fibers and Composite Solutions contributed €244.7 million (9M 2020: €223.4 million) and €92.1 million (9M 2020: €60.7 million), respectively, to Group sales and benefited primarily from increased demand from the automotive industry. Compared to the previous year, sales increased by 9.5% in Carbon Fibers and by 51.7% in Composite Solutions. Only the Process Technology business unit, with sales down 4.9% to €62.1 million, was not yet able to participate in the general economic upward trend.

See the attached document for more infomation.

• IVL is celebrating a decade of PET recycling and carbon reduction milestones
• Over 10 years, IVL has achieved a 100x increase in recycled PET

Indorama Ventures Public Company Limited (IVL), a world-class sustainable chemical company, launches its 10th annual Sustainability Report and a video celebrating a decade of ambitious PET recycling and carbon reduction milestones. The company is committed to intensifying its drive towards ending plastic waste and a more circular economy in the decade ahead.

Since its first Sustainability Report in 2011, IVL has grown its sustainability initiatives through the 3Ps – People, Planet and Prosperity. From the baseline in 2013, the company achieved a 10% reduction in GHG intensity, 4% in energy intensity and 7% in water intensity. It also increased total waste diverted from landfill from 48% to 84% in 2020. Moreover, IVL’s global PET recycling capacity has improved almost 100 times from 3,576 tons per year in 2011 – the first entry of IVL to the PET recycling business – to more than 330,000 tons per year in the second quarter of 2021.

Celebrating 10 years of sustainability reporting
Throughout the decade, IVL has voluntarily adopted international standards for its sustainability reports to drive benefits for the environment, society and economy. The effort resulted in recognition by world-class sustainability ratings agencies such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) and the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI).

Recent Sustainability Reports have featured business cases and special situations such as COVID-19. In 2016, IVL was the first Thailand-based company to introduce an additional, shorter version of the report called the Sustainability Report Executive Summary. This year, IVL has made further improvements with an interactive approach, including links to videos and shortcuts to highlighted articles. As a global company operating in 33 countries, the report is available in 15 languages.

On track to recycle 50 billion bottles per year by 2025
In 2020 IVL recycled 10.1 billion PET bottles and is on track to recycle 50 billion bottles per year by 2025. The company’s global reach and leadership position as the world’s largest PET and recycled PET resin producer allow IVL to leverage a closed-loop system. In 2020 IVL invested in three additional recycling facilities and recently acquired CarbonLite’s recycling assets in Texas.

INDEX™20 opened its doors, after an 18 month’ wait, delighted to welcome the nonwoven industry back to Geneva with open arms. The exhibition floor was busting with activity and anticipation at the prospect of new business.  

Over 500 exhibitors from 44 countries were present at the event, premiering their latest innovations. The resounding message was one of a positive outcome and an inspiring vision of the industry’s future across the spectrum of applications sectors.

The industry continued to evolve dramatically during the pandemic, and expectations were high as players from across the industry worldwide came together for the first time since 2017. Exhibitors said their expectations were exceeded, citing the high quality of the visitors present, converging on INDEX™ to conclude new business projects.

Over 9,300 visitor entries were recorded on-site, and over a thousand on the virtual platform. 

As the industry’s first hybrid industry event, many attendees made the most of the interactive INDEX™ virtual platform by arranging video meetings and messaging as well live exchanges. It also meant those unable to attend personally benefitted from the rich Sector Seminar programme and a wide variety Exhibitor Product Presentations.

The Innovation Lab opened its doors for the first time, demonstrating the sheer diversity of applications in which nonwovens are employed. The spotlight was on nominees of the INDEX™ Innovation Awards, and the winners presented with their coveted bronze statues designed by Belgian artist Olivier Strebelle. This initiative demonstrates the innovative properties and uses of nonwovens across a wide range of sectors, demonstrating the exciting future of the industry and its suppliers.

INDEX™23 will take place from 18 to 21 April 2023.

Digital printing is gaining in importance and increasingly relegating conventional printing methods to the bench. In the new episode of the Blue Couch Series, Sappi and the Durst Group, two seasoned industry leaders, explain what is behind the success of this printing method and which markets offer the greatest future potential for digital printing.

The new challenges manufacturers are currently facing include a growing demand for faster production and delivery, an ever-increasing variety of products, small production volumes and the trend towards more personalised campaigns.

In the latest episode of the Blue Couch Series, Andrea Riccardi, Head of Product Management at Durst, as well as Paola Tiso, Sappi’s Head of Sales Digital Solutions, and Luis Mata, Sales Director Packaging & Digital Solutions, will be talking about how digital printing can meet market demands for timely production with shorter runs and high flexibility, while reducing production costs through changed production processes.

One focus will be on the growing market for corrugated boards. Viewers will learn how the exponential growth of e-commerce and the growing pressure for more sustainable solutions are fuelling innovations for the digitalisation of packaging. The other main topic, digital dye sublimation printing, also offers a wide range of benefits to manufacturers in the interior design, decoration, visual communication, sports and fashion sectors and supports the industry's requirements to produce more sustainably.  

The “Digital Printing – far more than just a printing process” episode will air on 2 November at 10am (CET) at: www.sappi-bluecouch.com.

The National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO) President and CEO Kim Glas issued a statement following President Biden’s remarks on the global supply chain crisis and stressed the importance of investing onshoring and nearshoring:

"We appreciate President Biden’s call to ensure we are building more resilient and reliable supply chains and to invest in our manufacturing industries here at home, in his address earlier today.

There is a reason we got into this mess and there is a reason we have a global supply chain crisis. Years of offshoring production in a race to the bottom –exacerbated by predatory trade practices that have undermined so many manufacturing industries--has led to a tipping point. In fact, it was not too long ago that nurses in New York City and beyond were wearing garbage bags as gowns as our overreliance on Chinese production chains exposed severe fragilities in keeping our health care workers safe during the height of the pandemic.

China’s virtually unlimited and unrealistic pricing power coupled with its subsidies and lack of enforceable environmental standards strips benefits and undermines policy objectives, and leaves us in an untenable situation of overreliance on a foreign supply chain for critical products and raw materials. This must change.

We must hold China accountable for predatory trade practices that have offshored our industries and our jobs. We must onshore and nearshore more textile and apparel production chains out of Asia to the U.S. and also to Western Hemisphere trade partners. This has a multitude of benefits to ensure more reliability in production and also has remarkable job benefits to U.S. manufacturers and our allied trading partners who adhere to higher labor and environmental standards. Further, it will help address the migration crisis and grow better paying jobs.

Now is the time to we need to unlock long-term commitments to source product from the USA and from our Hemispheric partners.  If we moved another 10 percent of global production to the U.S. and the Hemisphere, imagine the benefits that could be achieved.  Ensuring further verticalization and investment in all aspects of the industry, from raw materials to finished products, is good for the American economy and workers in the U.S. and in the region.

Our industry stands ready to help and provide the solutions to onshore and nearshore these production chains that benefit manufacturing workers, the U.S. economy, our Western Hemisphere allies, and consumers.   Further, onshoring and nearshoring these critical production chains has remarkable benefits for the environment and addresses the growing, systemic and alarming issues associated with climate change.  

It is critical that supply chains mitigate risks so that we are never in this situation again.  We appreciate President Biden recognizing the value of onshoring these critical production chains and stand ready to work with the administration in these efforts."

Electronics For Imaging, Inc. announces its newest digital front end (DFE) server solution for digital printing – the EFI™ Fiery® FS500 Pro platform. Fiery FS500 Pro will help print providers meet the challenges of shorter runs, faster turnaround times, less experienced staff, increased security standards and the need to reduce cost. The new Fiery DFE platform brings innovation to an extensive line-up of new digital printers coming for office, commercial, in-plant, packaging, and textile printing.  

The Fiery FS500 Pro platform features five key areas:

• Faster job processing. Print providers will benefit from faster job processing time and up to 40% faster application launch time to produce more jobs per shift.
• Faster turnaround time for short runs. Advanced Fiery features speed up administration and production of print jobs in fast moving print shops.
• More sellable print, less waste. Fiery FS500 Pro has more tools available for detecting potential errors in files, reducing both production time and waste.
• More-accurate brand colors. A new Fiery TrueBrand solution for corporate users makes it easy to ensure accurate printing of brand colors from Microsoft Word or PowerPoint.
• Advanced security. Fiery FS500 Pro provides new features for high security environments, ensuring compliance with customer security requirements and industry standards.