From the Sector

A ceremony was held at the headquarters of Confindustria Bergamo, the Bergamo association of manufacturing and service companies, where scholarships were awarded to the sons and daughters of RadiciGroup employees who graduated from university during the years 2019 and 2020.

More than 40 young graduates were presented scholarships by Angelo, Maurizio and Paolo Radici, the Group’s shareholders: “We wish you a very satisfying professional career that will also contribute to your personal growth. The professional world of work needs your enthusiasm, energy and dynamism. Choose what you like to do, because only in this way can you best express yourself and contribute to the growth of the society in which we all live.”

The scholarships were awarded to students who received honours degrees in many different specializations: mathematics, business, economics, foreign languages, communication and various engineering fields. Two “student workers” – Group colleagues connected remotely from Brazil and China – who graduated with university degrees and met the scholarship eligibility requirements.

The host of the ceremony was Francesca Dubbini, vice president for education of the Young Entrepreneurs Group of Confindustria Bergamo, who stressed the importance of combining education with experience in the field. The students were also able to visit Joiint Lab and SMILE, laboratories at the Confindustria headquarters established with the goal of creating synergies between the world of research and industry.

BB Engineering GmbH (Germany), a subsidiary of Oerlikon Textile, is pleased to announce that Thai Polyester Co., Ltd (Thailand) has placed a major order for four VacuFil systems for recycling bottle flakes with connected direct spinning. The polyester manufacturer, established in 2001 and with an overall annual capacity of 316,800 tons, is one of Thailand’s leading producers and exclusively uses German technology. To this end, the company already operates Oerlikon Barmag and Oerlikon Neumag systems. The BB Engineer-ing VacuFil systems will be deployed to convert existing spinning plant equipment from processing polyester to processing PET bottle flakes without loss of performance.

BB Engineering supplies the complete recycling process – from the drying stage and extrusion, all the way through to the spinning plant-appropriate fine filtration stage. Thanks to decades of experi-ence in spinning plant technology, the German machine construc-tor also provides comprehensive spinning plant know-how and is aware of how the recycling process must be designed to ensure that the product manufactured using the spinning plant ultimately has the right quality. The four new VacuFil systems will be integrated into the existing building infrastructure and process landscape at Thai Polyester, with a total output of approx. 4,000 kg/h. The Vacu-Fil systems will be complemented by BB Engineering 3DD mixers for directly feeding dyes into the recycled melt flow. Commissioning has been scheduled for 2023.

Thai Polyester will be using the new VacuFil systems to manufac-ture its ‘EcoTPC’ recycling-brand yarns. 100% of these polyester yarns are produced from bottle, fiber and yarn waste and are all GRS certified.

• Six Carbon Capture and Utilisation technologies for a sustainable chemical and fuel production nominated for the innovation award “Best CO2 Utilisation 2022”
• Conference on CO2-based Fuels and Chemicals 2022 – Cologne (Germany) and online, hybrid conference, 23-24 March 2022

Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU) Innovations of the Year 2022: A lot of technologies are in place and in development to face the challenges of a sustainable chemicals and fuels production based on the utilisation of captured CO2 from industrial off-gases or directly from the atmosphere. To honor these, nova-Institute grants its annual award, “Best CO2 Utilisation”, within the framework of the “Conference on CO2-based Fuels and Chemicals” taking place in Cologne on 23-24 March 2022. Great submissions reached the nova-Institute and six nominees now get the chance to demonstrate their full potential to a wide audience in Cologne (Germany) and online.

Here are the six nominees:

• Acies Bio (SI) – OneCarbonBio
• Air Company (US) – Air Eau de Parfum
• Avecom (BE) – Power To Protein
• CleanO2 Carbon Capture Technologies (CA) – CleanO2 Soap
• Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB (DE) – eBioCO2n Technology
• Nordic Electrofuel (NO) – E-Fuel 1

• INDA, the Association of the Nonwoven Fabrics Industry, today announced six new board members and its 2022 slate of officers to guide the success of the nonwovens industry and its members.

Elected by the INDA membership to three-year terms that began on March 1, the new board members bring a high level of diverse expertise and insight to the management of the association as it moves forward with its vibrant growth.

“I am delighted to welcome such a strong group of new board members who bring deep industry knowledge and insights to provide strategic stewardship for our association,” said Dave Rousse, INDA President. “We look forward to working with them to advance INDA’s new value proposition to enhance our industry’s leadership position and deliver greater value to our members.”

The new board members are from global leaders Lenzing Group, Bast Fibre Technologies, Reifenhauser Reicofil, Rockline Industries, Hollingsworth & Vose Company and Principle Business Enterprises.  

INDA also announced Bryan Haynes, Ph.D., R&E Technical Director Kimberly-Clark, has been named Chairman of the Board. Barbara Lawless, Vice President Sales and Marketing, Medical Products, Precision Fabrics Group, Inc. has been elected Vice Chair of Finance, and Richard Altice, President and CEO of NatureWorks, has been appointed to INDA’s Executive Committee.

The new board members are:

• Jürgen Eizinger, Senior Commercial Director, Nonwovens Business EU/AM/MEA, Lenzing Group

Eizinger has nearly 20 years of fiber industry experience. He has been with the Lenzing Group since 2001 and most recently was Vice President of the Global Nonwoven Business. He has worked at multiple locations around the world and held various commercial, engineering and technical customer services roles.

• Jim Posa, President and General Manager, Bast Fibre Technologies, Inc.

Posa has 30-plus years of nonwovens experience and has successfully led businesses from startups to some of the largest companies in the nonwovens market. He has developed and implemented strategic business, development, operational and acquisition growth plans. His teams have worked with businesses focused on most of the major end use markets such as hygiene, wipes, filtration, medical and industrial. As a senior executive, Posa has led global businesses at Fiberweb, BP/Amoco, CEO of a Nisseki/Amoco joint venture (ANCI), Lydall, and Nitto America. A long-time INDA supporter, he has previously served on committees and as a Board member.

• Markus Mueller – Sales Director and Board Member, Reifenhauser Reicofil

Mueller brings to the INDA Board 35 years of experience with Reifenhauser in the nonwovens and film industries. His experience has included roles as PLC Engineer, Commissioning Engineer, Project Manager and Sales Manager. Mueller has extensive knowledge of the global hygiene and medical nonwovens markets. He holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Cologne.

• Matt Koele, Director of Global Materials Development, Rockline Industries

Koele is based at Rockline’s headquarters in Sheboygan, WI.  Before joining Rockline in 2012, he has held several business and Research and Development (R&D) leadership positions at SC Johnson and Kimberly-Clark Corporation. An inventor with over 10 patents, Koele is a magna cum laude graduate of Michigan Technological University in Chemical Engineering.

• Mike Clark, President, Filtration Solutions, Hollingsworth & Vose Company

Clark joined H&V in 2003 and has held numerous leadership positions in the U.S. and Germany. He previously served as the President of the High Efficiency and Specialty Filtration Division from 2009 to 2020.  Before joining H&V, Clark was a strategy consultant for eight years working with Fortune 100 manufacturing companies. He holds a bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

• Andrew Stocking, Ph.D., President and CEO, Principle Business Enterprises, Inc. (PBE)

Stocking joined PBE in 2017 after a career in engineering, technology, nonprofits and government. He was named President and COO in 2018, then President and CEO in 2020, becoming the third-generation leader of the family-owned organization. He previously held roles in the private sector and within federal government offices, including the Department of Energy and Congressional Budget Office. He earned a BS in Chemical Engineering and an MS in Civil Engineering from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in Resource Economics from the University of Maryland.

The 21-member board is comprised of elected Board Officers. One-third of the entire Board is elected each year for a three-year term by a majority vote of INDA’s general membership. INDA’s Executive Committee, empowered to act on behalf of the Board between meetings, consists of the Board Officers plus four appointees.

BB Engineering GmbH (Germany) delivers a melt filter for recycling PET flakes to polyester manufacturer Indorama Polyester Industries (Thailand). Indorama will be using the type NSF38 filter in its recently assembled recycling system in order to produce rPET granulate from flake PET bottle waste. The NSF38 filter enables continual filtering – in other words, the system switches from one filter to the other during the process without the need for conversion shut-downs. The filter allows the processing of consumer waste for example, in the form of shredded PET bottles into new, high-quality rPET granulate. This granulate is subsequently processed into manmade fibers in spinning systems.

The NSF38 is a switchable filter with a filter surface area of ap-prox. 16 m2 on each side, with throughputs of between 1,000 and 1,900 kg/h. The filter inserts each contain 19 pleated filter candles (60 x 1,000mm Ø). The filter medium comprises a sin-tered metal fiber nonwoven with a filtration fineness of 25 μm. This ensures that the melt remains free of contaminants and gel particles, which in turn enables the production of high-quality end products.

Altri has awarded AFRY engineering, site selection and integrated environmental authorization services assignment for a greenfield textile fiber factory in Spain. In addition, AFRY will support Altri to conceive, create and implement foundations for Industry 4.0 technologies in this new plant.

The demand for sustainable textile fibres is growing quickly globally. To support this growth, the Portuguese pulp producer Altri has become the industrial partner to public-private consortium Impulsa (Society for the Development of Strategic Projects of Galicia) as the lead investor and technologist to study the wood-based textile fibers biofactory exclusively. This biofactory will use Galician wood as the primary raw material together with recycled remains from the textile industry to produce dissolving pulp and Lyocell fibre. The plant will be designed based on the best available techniques (BAT), best environmental practices, as well as cutting-edge proven technologies and the production will be fossil-fuel-free. The project is expected to benefit from the “Next Generation EU” program.

Altri is responsible for designing and developing the biofactory project to transform wood into a textile fiber, evaluating site locations and exploring alliances with the entire value chain. Altri has assigned AFRY to support the project development and planned project implementation.  

The industrial biorefinery to be built from scratch will be able to provide the textile cluster of the Iberian peninsula with sustainable cellulosic fibers, contributing to the strengthening of the circular economy and decarbonisation of an important economic sector such as the textile sector.

AFRY has been involved in the project development from the very early stages. AFRY supported the project concept idea initially developed by Altri and led the preliminary feasibility study. A multi-disciplinary team of AFRY’s engineering and consulting experts is currently supporting Altri on the site selection activities, engineering and permitting processes.

Première Vision - Each year, since its creation more than 20 years ago, the JEC Composites Innovation Awards celebrate successful projects and cooperation between players of the composite industry.
The competition has especially shined a light on some 203 companies and 499 partners, awarding them for the excellence of their composite innovations.

After pre-selection of the finalists, one winner is selected in each category:

• Aerospace – Application
• Aerospace – Process
• Automotive & road transportation – surface
• Automotive & road transportation – structural
• Building & Civil Engineering
• Design, Furniture & Home
• Equipment & Machinery
• Maritime Transportation & Shipbuilding
• Sports, Leisure & Recreation
• Renewable Energy

The international jury representing the entire composites value chain includes:

• Michel COGNET, Chairman of the Board, JEC Group
• Christophe BINETRUY, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, EC Nantes
• Kiyoshi UZAWA, Professor/Director, Innovative Composite Center, Kanazawa Institute of Technology
• Jiming Sung HA, Professor, Hanyang University
• Brian KRULL, Global Director of Innovation, Magna Exteriors Inc
• Karl-Heinz FULLER, Manager Future Outside Materials, Mercedes Benz AG
• Deniz KORKMAZ, CTO, Kordsa Teknik Tekstil AS
• Henry SHIN, Head of Center, K-CARBON
• Véronique MICHAUD, Associate Professor/ Director, EPFL – Laboratory for Processing of Advanced Composites
• Alan BANKS, Lightweight Innovations Manager, Ford Motor Company
• Enzo CRESCENTI, Technical Authority and Composite Expert, Airbus

Discover the finalists in each category here.

Montalvo, international specialist in web Tension Control, has hired Steve Franklin as their new Director of Engineering. Mr. Franklin will be overseeing Montalvo’s Electrical, Mechanical, and Automation Engineering teams, directing the development of new products, customized products, and larger-scale projects, while improving processes and expanding the company’s overall Engineer capabilities.

Chief Executive Officer, Bryon Williams says “Steve is an incredible asset to the team. We are continuously pushing ourselves as a company, creating new products, expanding into new markets, and providing additional offerings to our customers as a total web handling and web tension control solutions provider. Steve’s background and experience are only going to accelerate these objectives and our overall growth. Mr. Franklin brings new ideas, innovations, and leadership to the team, and I am very excited to see what the future brings.”

Mr. Franklin has over 25 years of experience as an engineer and 14 years as an Engineering Manager for a global automation supplier, where Mr. Franklin monitored the execution of procedures and processes that Engineering is involved with, and encourage changes that make the company more flexible, competitive, and quality conscious. Mr. Franklin holds a Bachelor of Science in Physics from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Fully integrated production lines from single source suppliers have increasingly become the norm in the textile industry and make complete sense in meeting today’s complex supply chain needs, according to TMAS – the Swedish Textile Machinery Association.

“Over the past few decades, textile mills have transitioned from consisting of collections of individual machines serviced and maintained largely by in-house mechanics as well as separate supplier companies for each part of the production line,” says TMAS Secretary General Therese Premler-Andersson. “Those in-house engineering service teams have diminished over the years, while the introduction of electronic drive systems in the 1980s and 90s also put an increased emphasis on the need for third party electrical engineers, operating separately to the machine builders.

“Subsequently, mechanical machines and electronic drive systems became much more integrated, and more recently, with the advent of digitalisation, entire production lines are becoming centrally controlled with remote, instantaneous connections to their suppliers for service and maintenance.

“In this context, the integration of machinery and automation specialists as single-source suppliers makes perfect sense, while partnerships between machine builders and their customers have never been more important.”

The recent acquisition of Nowo textile machinery from its previous owner, Brandstones Ab Oy, by TMAS member ACG Kinna, she adds, is a good example of this general trend.

Nowo, headquartered in Turku, Finland, designs, manufactures and exports high-end textile production machinery mainly for the fibre processing industry. At the end of the 1980s it introduced the highly successful Nowo Vac pillow filling system, which has been its best-selling system, alongside the Noworoll ball fibre machine, introduced in the 1990s.

Nowo’s machine range covers the entire production process from bale opening to weighing and filling, and complete production lines are tailored to the specific needs of customers. The company can also deliver individual machines such as bale openers, cards, cross-lappers, pickers, mixing devices, material silos, sucking devices, anti-static units etc. Seven patents cover the company’s technologies.

Founded in 1977, ACG Kinna Automatic, based in Skene in Sweden, specialises in customised and cost-efficient solutions for the production of pillows and quilts. All of its design, manufacturing and final line testing is carried out in Sweden and the reliability and longevity of its machines has earned it the trust of the world’s largest furniture and home decoration retailers and Europe’s largest manufacturer of pillows and duvets, among many customers.

• RadiciGroup and DKB introduce the first “circular” ski suit
• A garment made of yarn obtained from recycled materials and designed with end-of-life recyclability in mind, without compromising style, design and technical performance.
• RadiciGroup Ski Club athletes will be the first ambassadors of this sustainability project

The first truly sustainable ski suit, featuring Italian style and design and a zero-kilometre supply chain, is finally here. Two Bergamo companies of excellence played the leading roles in the conception and realization of this highly innovative fashion-sport garment: RadiciGroup, a world leading producer of chemical intermediates, polyamide polymers, high-performance engineering polymers and advanced textile solutions, and DKB, a company specializing in technical sportswear with the same brand name.

The ski suit, consisting of jacket and trousers, is fashioned with a fabric made of RENYCLE, a RadiciGroup yarn obtained from mechanically recycled polyamide (nylon), which affords notable savings in energy and water consumption, as well as lower CO2 emissions. In addition, the suit’s padding and numerous accessories, such as zippers, Velcro, buttons and thread, are also made of polyamide.

This achievement was made possible by the great teamwork of RadiciGroup and DKB on the research and development of chemically compatible materials that can be used in special applications requiring high technical performance. The end result is an almost mono-material garment that significantly facilitates end-of-life recycling. It can be more easily converted into polymers for use in the manufacture of ski boot components and bindings, in addition to applications in the automotive and furnishing industries, or in any other sector requiring the characteristics of high performance polyamides.

The ski suit by RadiciGroup is thus an all-round application of ecodesign and circular economy principles to fashion and garment making, which justifies the claim “Una sostenibilità all’altezza delle nostre montagne” [Sustainability worthy of our mountains] written in a logo patch on the inside of the jacket.

“I am particularly proud of this achievement, a synthesis of my passion and effort,” said Angelo Radici, president of RadiciGroup. “I’ve always loved mountaineering and skiing, and, together with my collaborators, I work hard at our company day in and day out to find innovative solutions that improve the sustainability of our industry. This ski suit is concrete proof of the fact that textiles and apparel can be made sustainable without compromising on comfort, design, looks or performance. I will never get tired of repeating that collaboration among the firms along the production chain is crucial to manufacturing goods with an ecodesign approach, considering their end-of-life recyclability and, thus, potentially giving them unlimited durability. Upstream producers, like us, gladly share our know-how in materials chemistry and experience in recycling with our downstream partners, so that, together, we can find sustainable and viable solutions in the various sectors where we operate.”