From the Sector

The opening of this facility marks the expansion of ISKO’s Creative Room Services (CRS) division and its dedication to the continuation of responsible production.

ISKO has opened its first product development centre, based in London. Creative Room London is a unique and innovative space and the first of its kind in the UK. It is the latest initiative of Creative Room Services (CRS), a division of ISKO devoted to offering streamlined and simplified solutions for all denim requirements – from fabric to finished garment.

With a focus on sustainable washing and finishing techniques, customers at Creative Room London will be able to work in parallel with experts to achieve their desired denim looks. Together with machine technology partner Jeanologia, they have been able to develop innovative washing and finishing techniques that meet the highest quality and sustainability standards with a significantly lower environmental impact.

The Creative Room London will also be the central point for their customer’s full product development, ensuring the whole process is agile and more efficient. As well as a hub for its customers, Creative Room London will also act as a platform of education and support for the wider denim community, working with local talent and universities to share knowledge and to bring ideas and concepts to life.

• DOMOs neuer Service deckt das globale Produktportfolio von Werkstoffen für den Spritzguss ab.
• DOMO Engineered Materials ermöglicht den direkten Zugriff auf die stets aktuelle Materialdatenbank für Spritzgusssimulationen, sodass Kunden jederzeit die aktuellsten, umfangreichsten und validierten TECHNYL®-Werkstoffdaten einsehen können.
• Dieser neue Service für schnellere Projektentwicklungszeiten wird am 12. Mai 2022 freigeschaltet.

Bisher mussten Anwender, die die neuesten Datenbanken für Spritzgussanwendungen von den jeweiligen Anbietern erhalten wollten, auf ein Update der Simulationssoftware warten. Von der Verfügbarkeit neuer Materialien bis zur Aktualisierung der öffentlichen Datenbanken verging beträchtliche Zeit – mitunter mehr als ein Jahr. Darüber hinaus mussten sich Anwender regelmäßig an verschiedene Kontakte wenden, um von Materialanbietern Auskünfte über die neuesten verfügbaren Ressourcen einzuholen.

DOMO ermöglicht es seinen Kunden jetzt mit regelmäßigen Aktualisierungen der Datenbank für Autodesk Moldflow einen wertvollen neuen Service zu erhalten. Auf Anfrage werden auch Spritzgussmaterialdaten für andere Softwarelösungen (Moldex3D, CADmould usw.) von unserem Sales und Technical Manager zur Verfügung gestellt.

Da Kunden so stets die neuesten Materialdaten für Spritzgusssimulationen zur Hand haben, können sie Zeit und Mühe bei der Generierung der notwendigen Daten für ihre Projekte sparen. Diese validierten Messdaten für präzisere Simulationen ermöglicht den Kunden, ihre Entwicklungszeiten zu verkürzen und Produkte schneller auf den Markt zu bringen.

Darüber hinaus umfassen diese direkten Aktualisierungen auch neue Werkstoffe aus DOMOs Entwicklungspipeline sowie neue validierte Daten, die über die gewöhnliche Vorgehensweise von Spritzgussanwendungen hinausgehen und beispielsweise die Optimierung der Vorhersage von Faserausrichtungen erlauben.

For the autumn/winter season 2022, FIRE+ICE is further developing both sides of BOGNER's collection: function and performance. Bold colors, modern prints, technical materials and fashionable silhouettes create looks for luxurious fashion metropoles as well as mountain resorts.

The collection presents new versions of the characteristic FIRE+ICE ID jackets made of recycled fibers. The ski touring styles are multifunctional garments for all active outdoor activities: Whether ski touring, skiing, cross-country skiing or hiking, the focus is on the right support, fit and equipment to stay cool on the ascent and warm on the descent. The signature mix of freeride attitude and contemporary urban style creates casual "urban outdoor pieces" with a technical twist.

Paper Converting Machine Company (PCMC) and Hudson-Sharp, part of Barry-Wehmiller’s Converting Solutions platform, have made significant contributions to Aspen Press & Packaging’s new flexible packaging division. Based in Salt Lake City, the packaging company has installed a 10-color, 52-inch Fusion C flexographic printing press from PCMC and two Ares 400-SUP stand-up pouch machines from Hudson-Sharp.

PCMC’s Fusion C is a central impression (CI) press that combines the features and advantages of both inline and CI presses. It allows for quick setups and efficient runs, and is the only CI press manufactured in North America.

Also incorporated into Aspen Press & Packaging’s new flexible packaging division are two Hudson-Sharp Ares 400-SUP stand-up pouch machines. Recognized as state-of-the-art in quality, speed and accuracy, the Ares 400-SUP has a compact footprint, and offers quick changeovers and the ability to run a variety of substrates with ease, including recycle-ready PE, biodegradable films, laminated films and paper.

Sustainable products that solve problems are the themes for this year’s finalists for the World of Wipes Innovation Award® that will be presented at the 16th annual World of Wipes® International Conference, June 27-30, at the Marriott Marquis in Chicago, Illinois.    

The three products vying for the award are an all-natural substitute for plastic fibers from Bast Fibre Technologies, a dual-textured 3D cleaning wipe from Fitesa and an environmentally safe flushable wipe from Nice-Pak.

INDA’s Technical Advisory Board selected the finalists from nearly 20 submissions based on their creativity, novelty, uniqueness, technical sophistication within the entire nonwovens wipes value chain and expansion of nonwovens use.

Kimberly-Clark Scott® 24-Hour Sanitizing Wipes was the recipient of the 2021 World of Wipes Innovation Award®.

This year’s in-person WOW International Conference is expected to draw 400-plus senior-level wipes professionals from all wipes segments, repeating last year’s strong live event that welcomed 475 wipes professionals from 14 countries to Atlanta, GA.

Finalists Announced
The three companies vying for the award (in alphabetical order) are:

• Bast Fibre Technologies – Sero® Hemp Fibers
• Fitesa – Dual Textured 3D Wipe
• Nice ’N CLEAN® SecureFLUSHTM Technology Flushable Wipes by Nice-Pak

WOW 2022 Conference Highlights
This year’s WOW conference sessions focus on: Circular & Sustainable Wipes, Supply Chain Challenges in Wipes, Nonwoven Substrates for More Sustainable Wipes, Trends in the Wipes Market and Among Consumers, Disinfection Concerns and New Technologies, Sustainable Wipe Packaging Trends, and Developments in Flushability Issues.

• Continued focus on sizeable investments in innovation and sustainability.
• Underway in India, the acquisition of the Engineering Plastics business of Ester Industries Ltd. with the objective of keeping up the Group’s global growth trend

With total sales of EUR 1.508 million generated by over 30 production and sales units in Europe, Asia and America, RadiciGroup closed its 2021 financial year with positive results, despite the difficulties due to the lingering effects of the pandemic and the steep increase in the cost of raw materials and energy, especially during the latter part of the year.

The Group – led by brothers Angelo, Maurizio and Paolo Radici – continued to pursue its strategy of focusing on the core businesses considered to be strategic and synergistic, such as nylon chemicals, engineering polymers and advanced textile solutions, while, at the same time,  introducing new products, such as a line of personal protective equipment for medical and industrial use.

EBITDA reached EUR 268 million, and net income for the year was EUR 150 million.

Despite this situation, RadiciGroup considers it essential to continue making investments.

“In 2021, the Group invested EUR 53 million financed from cash flow,” Alessandro Manzoni, CFO of RadiciGroup, emphasized. “There was no impact on net financial position, which registered an improvement over 2020, as did all our balance sheet ratios."

Furthermore, in spite of the complexity of the period, in 2022 the Group shareholders have kept on with their significant investment plan aimed at strengthening RadiciGroup’s presence in global markets and improving its competitiveness.

Indeed, the Group has moved forward, according to plan, with the acquisition of the Engineering Plastics business of Ester Industries Ltd., an India-based company engaged for decades in the production of engineering polymers and listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange. RadiciGroup’s EUR 35 million investment in this transaction furthers the internationalization strategy of its High Performance Polymers business area.

Following their merger, Freudenberg Performance Materials, Low & Bonar, Mehler Texnologies® and Filc will be presenting their innovative solutions at a joint stand for the first time at this year’s techtextil exhibition in Frankfurt. The focus is on sustainability. Among the highlights are Evolon® RE, a microfilament textile for a wide variety of applications and markets, FILFLEX, a sustainable padding material for car seat covers, and the truck tarpaulin POLYMAR® 8556 ECO CF. Customers will find the world's leading manufacturer of technical textiles at Stand C51 in Hall 12.1.

Evolon® textiles made from recycled PET
With Evolon® RE, Freudenberg Performance Materials is presenting an even more sustainable version of its high-performance microfilament textiles. Evolon® RE is manufactured from an average of 70% recycled polyester, which the company makes by cycling post-consumer PET bottles in-house. Evolon® RE products are available for various applications such as technical packaging, in weights currently ranging from 80g/sqm to 300g/sqm. For high-tech wiping, lightweight Evolon® RE is now available starting from 30g/sqm. The material meets the needs of cleaning specialists for more sustainable wiping solutions. Evolon® RE offers the same high quality and material performance as all other Evolon® textiles.

Tarpaulins made from recycled raw materials presented by Mehler Texnologies®
When it comes to tarpaulins on trucks, both protection of the transport cargo and advertising for the transport company place high demands on the material. Mehler Texnologies® tarpaulin material ranks among the premium products for truck tarpaulins. The company is a pioneer in sustainable development and is showcasing POLYMAR® 8556 ECO CF. This unique material has a 25% share of recycled raw materials in the coating mass. In addition, the material is made with 100% R-PES yarns. The input materials undergo a complex separation and filtering process.

Sustainable padding material for automotive and furniture seat covers presented by FILC
FILFLEX is a soft and flexible padding layer made from nonwovens for automotive and furniture seat covers. It prevents leather from creasing and improves the dimensional stability of the seat covers. In terms of sustainability, its benefit is its 100% PET composition, making FILFLEX easy to recycle. FILFLEX offers customers easier handling during sewing and the seat covering process. End users benefit from the high seating comfort.

• ROICA™ V550 by Asahi Kasei for its responsible RF (Residual Free) line

Innova Fabrics, the Italian manufacturer of knitted fabrics for apparel, underwear and sports, confirms its choice of ROICA™ by Asahi Kasei, the Japanese leader of premium stretch fiber, for its new responsible line RF (Residual Free).

Despite the deep-rooted history of the company's team in the world of textiles, Innova Fabrics is a reality that is not afraid to innovate with a focus on environmental sustainability. As a result of its push for local production and attention to third-party sustainability certifications (including OEKO-TEX Standard 100, one of the world's best-known labels for textiles tested for harmful substances), Innova Fabrics continues its promise of responsibility with an enrichment of its conscious proposals. In the last season, Innova has increased its smart proposition by launching the RF (Residual Free) line, with the aim of reducing the impact of microplastics residues produced by the fashion industry. This is possible thanks to the combination of two responsible ingredients: SENSIL® Biocare by Nilit and ROICA™ V550 by Asahi Kasei.

SENSIL® BioCare is the premium, sustainable nylon 6.6 fiber enriched with a special technology that helps reduce the persistence of textile waste in the ocean and landfills by acting during and after the product's life cycle. Therefore, if the microplastics in SENSIL® BioCare garments are released during washing, they will decompose much faster than conventional Nylon 6.6 fibers, reducing textile waste. ROICA™ V550, part of the ROICA Eco-Smart™ family, is the premium, sustainable stretch yarn that degrades without releasing harmful substances into the environment, according to the Hohenstein's environmental certification. ROICA™ V550 also carries the Gold Level Material Health certificate from the Cradle-to-Cradle Product Innovation Institute, which evaluated the yarn's impact on human and environmental health. The strong relationship established between Innova Fabrics and ROICA™ by Asahi Kasei is a long-standing one: from the very beginning, the textile company chose ROICA™ as its main reference for premium stretch, using ROICA Colour Perfect™ in most of its articles. Having experienced the innovation of the ROICA™ line dedicated to high-quality color, Innova decided to opt for the ROICA Eco-Smart™ line as part of the extension of its environmentally conscious line.

Thanks to the constant synergy with its premium partner in innovative and responsible stretch, Innova continues its path towards a textile and fashion industry that respects the planet, without forgetting profit. And this is just the beginning. Innova Fabrics pieces containing SENSIL® BioCare and ROICA™ V550

• with a ready-to-use swatch book dedicated to its DEEP DIVE sustainable dyeing system for dark, popular color basics

Archroma, a global leader in specialty chemicals towards sustainable solutions, launches its first ever ready-to-use swatch book, dedicated to creating sustainable black and dark color basics for faster time to market, to support its popular DEEP DIVE 2.0 system.

In 2018, Archroma launched its system solutions, a holistic approach aimed at addressing the growing expectations of the public in terms of keeping consumers, and the environment, safe.
Under the umbrella of "The Archroma Way to a Sustainable World: Safe, efficient, enhanced, it's our nature", the Archroma systems are designed to create innovation and performance, whilst reducing the impacts on water, energy and other natural resources. The savings generated by these 70+ system solutions are demonstrated by Archroma's proprietary ONE WAY Impact Calculator, a ground-breaking tool launched in 2012 and continuously upgraded to simulate and optimize the footprint of textile application processes.

One of these systems, DEEP DIVE 2.0, has attracted a lot of interest not just from textile manufacturers but also from major brands and retailers worldwide. This popular system combines Drimaren® Ultimate HD, high-performance reactive dyes, with Blue Magic, an all-in-one pretreatment, Optifix® RUB New liq and Siligen® SIH-S New liq, a finishing treatment improved rub fastness and elegant hand feel, and an effective hydrolyzed dye remover, Cyclanon® XC-W New liq. The result is a shorter dyeing process combining right-first-time productivity, an improved fabric quality for longer lasting end-articles, as well as dramatically reduced water and energy utilization for brands committed to drive more sustainable production. Savings can reach up to 31% water and 34% energy.

The system is ideally suited for medium and dark cottons that have high performing fastness to light, multiple home laundering, saliva – in other words: apparel used for fashion, sports and baby’s wear.
At the same time, interested manufacturers and brands were facing the constant challenge of the fashion industry: time to market.

Often design is separated from execution in the factory and as such often designers initially select color that cannot be met in reality on different fibers or production routes in terms of color flare, metamerism, brightness, depth and now sustainable metrics – leading to lengthy delays and compromises in function, performance and/or color.
Archroma decided to create a dedicated tool aimed at addressing these issues. The company developed a new, unique book with color swatches made with the system that is ready to implement immediately into production thanks to engineered color standards and specifications.

This new tool offers a path to bridge the gap between “art and science” by providing at inspiration phase fully executable deep colors for cotton with controlled color metamerism and at the same time demonstrate water, energy and chemical savings, enhanced color fastness using safe chemistry for the end consumer. As a wardrobe staple, medium to dark shades are very popular with consumers. As a result, most brands and retailers often have and sell up to 60% of medium to dark shades in their seasonal palettes. It’s also the dark shades that use the most water and energy in production, so prioritizing these colors would have the largest ecological positive impact. The 48 colors swatched in the DEEP DIVE 2.0 book have been selected based on market popularity to allow brands and manufacturers to match that very stable market demand. Customers may use these colors as presented, or as inspiration whereby Archroma can create and match new custom colors using the DEEP DIVE 2.0 system.

Christophe Maestripieri, Global Head of the Archroma Brand Studio, the company’s department dedicated to support brands’ projects and innovations, explains: “We wanted to make sure our partners have all the tools they need to convert to more sustainable colors. We had the ideal dyeing system to do that, DEEP DIVE 2.0, with its high performance and reduced impacts on resources. Now, with the new DEEP DIVE 2.0 swatch book, we also offer to brands and manufacturers a way to select sustainable color options that meet the market demand for high quality medium to dark shades which can be implemented into production right away.”

• Innovation packages from STOLL - a company of the KARL MAYER Group

Optimizations, further developments and innovations are an integral part of STOLL's activities. The industry leader in flat knitting technology has recently launched a new offering in the form of defined innovation packages. The aim here is to make STOLL's high innovative strength even clearer and enable customers to benefit from it more quickly. "The demands made on flat knitting technology are changing all the time, whether in the case of technical textiles for transportation and furniture fabrics or medical solutions well as in the fashion sector, where new yarns - such as recycled yarns or innovative technologies, such as smart textiles - have to be taken into account all the time," knows Erhard Vöhringer, Sales Manager of the STOLL Business Unit in the KARL MAYER Group "Our customers always have to keep abreast of the latest developments. We are therefore continuously developing appropriate improvements, and with our innovation packages we are now offering even more detailed demand-oriented solutions."

Detail optimisations for more overall performance
The innovation packages have the benefits for customers in focus and were tailored to the respective target groups. Every optimization contained therein leads to a decisive improvement in production. All of the solutions developed can be easily integrated into existing STOLL machines.  

Innovation package Number One
Innovation package Number One will be launched on the market in a few weeks' time and is aimed explicitly at knitters who focus on technical textiles. The focus is on convenience and process acceleration. Simple network configuration, expansion of the number of NP values, extended functionality when loading and saving the pattern and also improvement of handling in connection with Production Management from PPS are just some of the features of the package. "The corresponding updates for the machine control system are available to our customers for download free of charge on Customer_Net. In the future, there will also be a cloud-based offering," explains Erhard Vöhringer.

Innovation package Number Two
Still in the pipeline, included in the Number Two innovation package, are improvements for the maintenance area – regarding the use of lubricants and the maintenance intervals (predictive maintenance) – as well as optimizations in terms of sustainability, for example when it comes to reducing consumption of oil and increasing reliability. These solutions will be suitable for all machine types and applications.
The focus here is on improvements in belt take-down, the import and export of data and support for additional storage feeders.
A physical improvement in handling is promised by the new lighting including mirror directly on the machine.
In addition, the development teams are currently working on optimizing various knitting qualities and increasing user-friendliness. So you can already be curious!

Concentrated innovative power
The STOLL development team, with several hundred engineers and technicians in the fields of electronics, software, patterning, and design, never runs out of topics. Questions like "What is the market looking for? What do customers want?  Which changes do the machines have to meet and which ones do the software control and design program have to meet?" are first discussed, evaluated and debated together as a team and then go into the development phase. "Our customers can be absolutely sure that all our innovations are meticulously tested before we go to market with them" emphasizes Erhard Vöhringer. This also applies to the solutions in the innovation packages.

Small solutions, big impact
STOLL flat knitting machines impress with their great application and production potential. Almost 150 years of extensive practical experience in flat knitting technology - the STOLL company was founded in 1873 - is unique in the industry. As a Business Unit of the KARL MAYER Group, STOLL continues to do everything in its power to inspire its customers with innovative strength. Productive, flexible and reliable - simply STOLL! This slogan has not lost any of its meaning today. Quite the contrary: With the new innovation packages, customers benefit not only from the latest high-tech flat knitting machines, but also from an always up-to-date performance upgrade of their existing machine park.
With its innovation packages, STOLL has found a flexible and very fast way directly to the customer. Anyone who wants to know more about this is cordially invited to this year's trade fairs. STOLL looks forward to seeing you at the KARL MAYER Group stand at ITM (Istanbul), Techtextil (Frankfurt), Techtextil India (Mumbai) and ITMA ASIA. (Shanghai).