From the Sector

With the foundation of STC Extrusion GmbH, headquartered in Chemnitz, Germany, a technical competence and know-how hub for the production of artificial turf and technical monofilaments has been established within the Starlinger Group.

The newly founded machine manufacturing company is part of Austria-based Starlinger Group and has taken over selected assets from the insolvent STC Spinnzwirn GmbH. STC Extrusion GmbH is a legally independent entity and does not act as the legal successor to STC Spinnzwirn GmbH. The company plans to focus on the core areas monofilament production for artificial turf and technical monofilaments made from a wide variety of polymers.

 “With the founding of STC Extrusion GmbH, we are opening a new chapter in STC’s history—with the experience, passion, and dedication to our customers that have always distinguished STC,” said Managing Director Nico Dürrschmidt. “We are convinced that with this solution, we have laid a solid foundation that will enable us to continue delivering value for our customers and partners worldwide in the future.”

In addition to production technology for artificial turf applications and technical monofilaments, STC Extrusion GmbH offers a Customer Experience Center for customer tests, raw material evaluation, research, and product and technology development. Furthermore, the company will take over and continue to provide service and spare parts for installed STC Spinnzwirn extrusion systems. This ensures that existing customers receive the technical support they need.
To leverage the established know-how in the field of winders, synergies with Georg Sahm GmbH & Co. KG—a winding technology specialist that is also part of the Starlinger Group—will be deepened to advance innovative winding technology and offer automation solutions and handling systems for bobbins. The expertise of Starlinger’s recycling division will also be incorporated into the development and implementation of environmentally friendly solutions with higher recycled content.

“With this strategical reorganization we aim to make STC Extrusion GmbH the knowledge and competence hub for artificial turf and technical monofilaments within the Starlinger network and establish it as a technology leader and brand for these specialized areas,” explains Angelika Huemer, CEO and Managing Partner of Starlinger & Co Ges.m.b.H., which holds the shares in the newly founded company. “We intend to make even better use of the synergies that arise among the companies in the Starlinger Group and to further develop and expand their individual areas of expertise.”

Recover has launched Recover™One, a range of ready-to-spin blends made entirely from recycled cotton and recycled polyester. Cotton-to-polyester ratios can be adjusted for different applications, and the material can be supplied as fiber blends or as fabric through Recover’s supply-chain partners.

The technical point is color management. Recover combines the original colors of textile-waste feedstocks with color-matched, dope-dyed recycled polyester through an intimate blending process.
The company says this creates consistent solid, heather and mélange options without a downstream overdyeing stage, reducing processing time and avoiding an additional wet-finishing step.

Applications cited include single jersey, French terry and fleece. Recover also refers to previously verified life-cycle assessments for its recycled cotton, but the new development is the system-level combination of recycled inputs, predefined color and spinning-ready consistency rather than recycled cotton alone.

Editorial relevance: Very high – establishes a global baseline for available spinnable textile-to-textile recycled fiber and quantifies the gap between waste availability and usable output.

Textile Exchange has published a first global methodology for estimating textile-to-textile recycled fiber availability for apparel and home textiles. Developed with Fashion for Good, Reverse Resources and TEXroad, the framework combines available waste volumes with collection, sorting, processing and technology constraints to estimate how much material can actually become spinnable fiber.

The analysis projects recyclable textile feedstocks to increase from roughly 10 million tonnes in 2025 to around 15 million tonnes by 2030. Yet the quantity of recycled spinnable fiber is estimated at only 1–1.5 million tonnes in 2025, rising to approximately 3–5 million tonnes by 2030.

The scope covers post-industrial and post-consumer textiles and both mechanical and chemical recycling of cotton, polyester, nylon, manmade cellulosics, wool and and blends.
Textile Exchange stresses that the figures are directional: data quality remains uneven, and future editions are intended to incorporate more primary data from recyclers and suppliers.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have developed a route in which lignin replaces a substantial share of the polyacrylonitrile (PAN) normally used in carbon fibre. Lignin is generated in large volumes as a by-product of pulp and biorefinery operations. The university reports that PAN use can be cut by half, with corresponding potential reductions in production cost and emissions.

The central technical challenge is mechanical performance. The team functionalises single-walled carbon nanotubes and incorporates them into the lignin-PAN matrix. The nanotubes act as nanoscale reinforcement and promote stronger crystalline alignment during spinning and thermal treatment.

The precursor solution is wet-spun, tension-assisted heat-treated and carbonised. The researchers report that the resulting renewable carbon fibre can reach quality requirements relevant to automotive manufacturing. Aerospace, energy infrastructure, sporting goods and wind energy are cited as additional markets.