From the Sector

• Hightech textiles for future-oriented construction projects

Building shells, bridges, staircases, façades ... construction projects are exposed to enormous mechanical loads. Often there are also considerable climatic or environmental influences. This has prompted the increasing use of fibre-reinforced materials in construction projects. After all, besides many other exciting properties, they offer high mechanical rigidity, low weight and excellent corrosion resistance.

Tapes, tubulars, sections and 3D woven textiles by vombaur form the perfect basis for these innovative building materials. The seamless round or shaped woven narrow textiles made of high-performance fibres are extremely loadable because they have neither seams nor welds – and therefore no undesirable breaking points. Their surface properties are identical over the entire length. In challenging tasks, composite textiles by vombaur offer a lightweight solution that is as reliable as it is durable.

Safe and durable solutions for challenging applications
The potential applications for lightweight components in the construction industry are as numerous as the project ideas of the planning and construction teams.
•    Ropes and tensioning elements made of carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP)
•    Reinforcement of building structures made of concrete, steel, wood or other materials
•    Sustainable restructuring of constructions and urban districts for bridges and buildings
•    CFC slats as reinforcements in case of repairs
•    (Filled) GRP pipes made of seamless round woven tubes by vombaur as columns/pillars
•    CFRP sections as steel girder substitutes
•    Hollow profiles with individually designed cross-sections
•    Glass fibre reinforced connecting elements for glazing to minimise expansion differences between the connecting element and the glass
•    Individual light wells

Implementing visions – with composite textiles by vombaur
As your development partner, vombaur facilitates innovative composites projects for challenging applications. In innovative and safety-sensitive industries such as automotive and aviation, chemical and plant engineering.  The composites experts at vombaur develop, create samples of and manufacture woven tapes and seamless round or shaped woven textiles by vombaur – in collaboration with the customer's enterprise development teams and individually for the respective projects. This is how novel and unique lightweight components made of high-performance textiles are created for visionary lightweight construction projects.

"Fibre-reinforced composites are the ideal material for future-oriented construction projects," explains Dr.-Ing. Sven Schöfer, Head of Development and Innovation at vombaur. "Their outstanding technical properties and design possibilities open up new and fascinating perspectives for construction projects. From building construction to civil engineering, from bridge construction to interior design. As an experienced development partner for sophisticated lightweight components, we at vombaur contribute our seamless solutions to these kinds of future-oriented projects."

• EFI Reggiani TERRA Silver Makes Debut at Fespa Global Print Expo 2021 for a Short, Smart and Green Process
• The new, industrial, entry-level EFI™ Reggiani TERRA Silver textile printer from Electronics For Imaging, Inc. is making its debut at the Fespa Global Print Expo 2021 tradeshow, 12-15 October at RAI Amsterdam.
• The EFI Reggiani TERRA Silver uses unique TERRA pigment ink for high-quality, highly sustainable direct-to-textile printing without steaming or washing.       

“This is one of the first trade shows to return after the pandemic, and we are very excited to again meet customers in person and showcase an innovative offering that delivers superior printing results while using less time, water and energy,” said EFI Reggiani Vice President and General Manager Adele Genoni. “We are introducing this advanced EFI Reggiani TERRA Silver solution to the many print service providers at Fespa, presenting them with an ideal path to enter the industrial textile segment with a short, smart and green production process.”

The new-version TERRA Silver printer is part of EFI’s complete TERRA line-up of pigment ink printer solutions. It is a 180-cm wide printer that can print up to 190 sqm per hour with eight dual-channel printheads. The printer also features:

•    A new recirculating ink system for superior reliability and minimum maintenance
•    Several printing modes to ensure maximum flexibility in terms of design capability
•    New, real-time image processing that eliminates time spent in image pre-calculations
•    A user friendly, intuitive interface
•    A more-efficient polymerisation process that takes place as printed textile goes through the printer’s on-board dryer.

In Fespa stand 1-G71, attendees can see the EFI Reggiani TERRA Silver print smoothly and precisely on knitted and woven fabrics. The printer’s quality is evident in its high-uniformity printing modes, and it delivers numerous features that enhance the production process, including an accurate WYSIWYG interface and flexible queue management.
 
EFI Reggiani is also a leading developer of textile inks. The EFI Reggiani TERRA pigment inks used on the Silver model deliver excellent wet and dry fastness properties and remarkable sharpness in detail. Designed to leverage EFI Reggiani digital printers’ market-proven industrial performance capabilities, these eco-friendly, water-based inks provide an extraordinary level of print durability and yield longer print head life with reduced maintenance costs. The high-performance digital pigment inks also use an innovative binder technology for fast, sustainable, and cost-competitive industrial textile printing on the widest range of fabrics. Users also gain superior print definition and colour intensity.
 
This year, EFI Reggiani celebrates 75 years of heritage and innovation in the textile world. Always committed to deliver to the market new cutting-edge technologies, EFI Reggiani has world-class products offering boosted uptime and reliability, high performance throughput, and remarkable printing uniformity and accuracy – all while helping customers increase the sustainability of their textile manufacturing activities. Green EFI Reggiani processes give users fast, complete and sustainable solutions across a broad range of textile applications.
 
In this 75th anniversary year, EFI Reggiani has also launched several other ground-breaking solutions, such as EFI Reggiani HYPER, the fastest scanning digital printer on the market, and the EFI Reggiani BLAZE, an industrial entry-level, easy-to-use printer designed to give new textile companies the opportunity to adopt digital inkjet production with a compact solution to blaze a successful path into the industry.

Elleti Group, an Italian manufacturer specialized in denim treatments and garment making, will present an innovative approach: how we experience denim and its transformation processes.

Elleti Group will display its “Green Replicants” project in a new and improved “Lighter. Better. Wiser.” edition.  This project, inaugurated a few years ago, recreates some of the iconic pieces from the Elleti Group Museum of Denim (dating back to the 19th century) with today’s most advanced environmentally sustainable technologies. This special edition replicas are fully developed using the latest addition to the sustainable tools of the company: the “Wiser Wash” technology, a patented washing method that eliminates the use of all potentially harmful chemicals and pumice stone, while drastically reducing the water consumption throughout the process.
 
Moreover, at the Immaterial M.O.D.E. booth, a special project designed by Denim Première Vision and realized in collaboration with Elleti Group and Sense – Immaterial Reality will take visitors through an Augmented Reality installation to explore a selection of legendary pieces from M.O.D.E., Museum of Denim by Elleti Group. By downloading the app, available on every digital store, on your phone or tablet and looking out for the signage on site, unique denim masterpieces will be at everyone’s fingertips.

Itema, a worldwide manufacturer of weaving solutions, will be for the first time at the Denim Première Vision fair. The company is renowned in the industry to be one of the only manufacturers to produce all the top three weft insertion technologies – rapier, air-jet and projectile.

The company will highlight the iSAVER® technology: designed by Itemalab®, the Itema advanced innovation company. Thanks to iSAVER®, one thousand kilos of cotton per loom a year will be saved – i.e. 3% of total raw materials – which will prevent wasting 20 million litres of water, while saving costs for about €2.000 a year on each loom. iSAVER® significantly contributes in making the denim production greener.

Archroma celebrates 8 years of leading the way to a sustainable world, with innovations and solutions aimed at creating added value sustainable for its partners, consumers and the planet.

Archroma came to life on 1st October 2013 from textile, paper and emulsions businesses acquired from Clariant by SK Capital Partners.
Building on decades of commitment to developing safer eco-friendlier chemistry, Archroma has become in the past 8 years a prominent name for more sustainable colors and performance, collaborating with leading brands such as Primark, G-Star, Patagonia, Esprit and more.

Archroma has introduced innovations, such as the EarthColors® made from non-edible plant waste from the food and herbal industry, Denisol® Pure, an indigo for aniline-free* denim, aniline being a category 2 carcinogen substance, and Smartrepel®, a PFC-free* water repellent solution. The company is also about to launch a new plant-based softener.

The company started to develop holistic solutions designed to bring 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 tool launched in 2012 and continuously upgraded to simulate and optimize the footprint of application processes.

Archroma also recently launched CASUAL X SMART, a sulfur dyeing system for trendy wash-down effects to make clothes that look smart at home and at work. The colors won't fade in the washing cycle, and the application process allows resource savings of up to 33% water, 21% energy and 35% chemical usage compared to a benchmark reactive & pigment garment dyeing.

With ONE WAY, a brand can calculate how much impact their current production and the Archroma Way collection will have on water, energy, chemical, raw material or CO2 footprint.

Lenzing presented at FILO its sustainable approach and on a selection of key innovations such as TENCEL™-branded specialty fibers.

As part of the space dedicated to Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto and Fashion B.E.S.T., the first Italian collective of responsible fashion designers, a selection of TENCEL™’s key technologies were under the spotlight:

• TENCEL™ x REFIBRA™, using cotton textile waste and wood pulp as the feedstock for cellulosic fibers, creating a circular solution;
• TENCEL™ x Indigo Color, infusing pigment into fibers directly during the spinning process;
• TENCEL™ Luxe, providing superior aesthetics, performance and comfort to be the perfect partner of other noble fibers such as silk, cashmere or wool;
• TENCEL™ Carbon Zero, offering carbon-zero CarbonNeutral®-certified products by Natural Capital Partners;
• TENCEL™ x Eco Clean, bringing totally chlorine-free-bleached TENCEL™ Modal fibers to the textile industry.

Lenzing's priority has been to produce fibers for many sectors (fashion, beauty care, cleaning, hygiene and home textiles) in a sustainable way. Each Lenzing product is made of cellulose from wood, a renewable natural resource, coming only from certified sustainable sources.
The Lenzing Group operates two commercial-scale biorefineries with 100% wood utilization, which ensure that the totality of wood constituents are used to produce fibers, biobased chemicals, and bioenergy, thus maximizing value creation from an economic and environmental perspective. This concept was illustrated by Carlo Covini, Lenzing Business Development Manager Italy & Switzerland, in his presentation “Lenzing’s biorefinery concept”.

• Sustainability concept with more than 500 sustainable and innovative solutions

Freudenberg Performance Materials Apparel (Freudenberg) is proud to announce its new House of Sustainability. The initiative is designed to assist customers worldwide in enhancing the sustainability of their products, thereby laying the groundwork for a more sustainable future together with Freudenberg. Customers will find more than 500 sustainable and innovative solutions of premium quality for a comprehensive range of applications in the apparel industry. With this initiative, Freudenberg is making its entire portfolio of sustainable solutions visible and transparent. At the same time, the leading global manufacturer of technical textiles is also driving its roadmap of forward-looking innovations.

Sustainability has been an integral part of business activities ever since Freudenberg was established and the first values and principles were drawn up in 1887. Freudenberg aspires to reduce its own footprint and increase the handprint for customers and end users. This means the company strives to minimize the impact of its production processes on the environment (footprint) while helping customers achieve their sustainability goals by offering appropriate products and services (handprint).

The Freudenberg House of Sustainability

The foundation for the Freudenberg House of Sustainability is made up of four elements: Certifications & Regulations, Raw Materials, Technology and Carbon Footprint. This foundation supports seven pillars providing customers with more than 500 sustainable solutions. The House of Sustainability enables customers to choose the right solutions for their sustainable applications and to meet their sustainability goals efficiently. In addition, all Freudenberg services are visible and transparent.

Launch of the Freudenberg House of Sustainability

The House of Sustainability will be launched worldwide over a 12-week period. Each week, Freudenberg will post in-depth information about the elements and pillars on several channels. The complete House of Sustainability will be presented at ISPO Munich 2022.

Global energy consumption reached a record high in 2019, following a 40-year trend for rapidly increasing energy demand that was only halted by the Coronavirus pandemic. It’s estimated that more than 80 % of this energy is still generated from fossil fuels that produce CO2 emissions and contribute to climate change. Renewable energy offers a solution to this problem, but saving energy whenever possible is an even more effective approach. That are the motives for Trützschler to develop the intelligent card TC 19i, which sets a new benchmark for energy-efficient carding.

The intelligent Trützschler card TC 19i features the unique T-GO gap optimizer, which continuously and automatically monitors and adjusts the carding gap to an ideal position during production. Innovative drive- and air technology further reduce energy consumption of the TC 19i.

The most energy-intensive elements in a carding machine are the drive, the dust suction process and the compressed air system. Permanent suction is needed to remove dust and cotton waste in key places. Smart optimization of these areas has made the intelligent card TC 19i a benchmark for energy efficiency in carding because it uses less electricity, lower suction pressure and less compressed air than other machines, while providing the highest production rates currently available on the market.

In a head-to-head comparison between the TC 19i and a high-performance card from a competitor, the TC 19i consumed at least 10 % less energy per kilogram of material produced when manufacturing rotor yarn from a cotton and cotton waste mix. The compared energy values included electric power consumption and energy required for suction and compressed air and were measured in both cards at the same production of 180 kg/h. A 10 % reduction in energy per kilogram of sliver produced, as proven here by TC 19i, can have a significant impact on a spinning mill’s profitability; annual savings worth a five-digit sum are frequently possible, depending on factors such as the output of the mill. The customer trial also showed TC 19i’s excellent reliability at the customer’s usual production rate of 180 kg/h, and even demonstrated stable performance at 300 kg/h in the same application. Because the TC 19i with T-GO gap optimizer realizes maximum production rates at no compromise in quality, manufacturers can reduce their energy demand and investment costs drastically: Less machines are needed to achieve the desired output, and energy consumption per production is reduced.

This improvement was made possible by a long and sometimes challenging innovation process involving mathematical models of air flows, as well as flow simulations and prototypes. By combining the final flowoptimized parts in the TC 19i, Trützschler’s experts have developed a card that operates with suction pressure of just -740 Pa and with an air requirement of only 4200 m³/h. This translates into 40 % less energy demand for air technology compared to the latest high-performance competitor model.

ROICA™ by Asahi Kasei, specialized in sustainable premium stretch fibers, and Bemberg™, a fiber made from the smart-tech transformation of cotton linters pre-consumer materials and converted through a traceable and transparent closed loop process, have been invited to showcase at Filo, the international fair of orthogonal weaving yarns for clothing and furnishings, circular knitwear and technical textiles from the 29-30th of September.

ROICA™ will show its main innovations and four key pieces of the modern and sustainable contemporary wardrobe able to enhance the versatility of the fibers, applied to fashion, sportswear, legwear and underwear.
The brand will also be the protagonist of “The contemporary consumer: Stretch your imagination with ROICA™ by Asahi Kasei smart innovation” speech on September 30th, 11am, organized by the fair to tell its sustainable story.

Bemberg™ will be at Filo showing some selected fabric innovation, and three responsible-driven designers representing different and complementary part of contemporary consumer wardrobe: ZEROBARRACENTO, Maurizio Miri and WAXEWUL.
Bemberg™ will be also involved in two speeches – entitled “Il viaggio di Bemberg™ by Asahi Kasei verso una moda contemporanea, premium e responsabile” - organized by the fair (Sept. 29th and 30th at 4pm), where it will share its story made of creation, production and process, as well as product performance, aspects related to sustainability and circular economy approach.

The Discover Natural Fibres Initiative (DNFI) will announce the winner of the Innovation in Natural Fibre Research Award soon. The aim of the award is to raise awareness of the achievements of the natural fibers sector by recognizing innovative and progressive work by people and institutions at the level of production and use of natural fibers. The closing date for applications was September 10.

Interest in the award was high again in 2021, indicating that research in fields involving natural fibres is robust. The applications that were received reveal a fascinating array of projects, new topics, and both private and public sector funding for natural fibre research.

There are seven finalists, and final judging is underway. The winner of the 2021 Award will be announced in early October.

The seven finalists for the 2021 Award fall into several broad categories, including traceability and the measurement of environmental impacts of natural fibres, the use of natural fibres in manufacturing biodegradable composites, and new or expanded uses for natural fibre materials. Researchers and institutions located in Australia, India, Republic of Korea, and Switzerland are among the finalists for the 2021 award.

As one of the driving forces helping to create a fully circular fashion industry, ISKO has partnered with Swedish research and development company MoRe Research, a part of RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, to investigate and develop new, sustainable technologies made from cellulosic-based materials, derived from waste textiles, for the company’s 25,000+ range of products. It is hoped that this research will also help make the production of cellulose-based materials more sustainable.

The work with MoRe Research feeds into ISKO’s Responsible Innovation™ strategy and will link with various sustainability projects the company is working on. For example, ISKO recently signed an agreement with HKRITA to license its Green Machine – a unique technology that fully separates and recycles cotton and polyester blends at scale.

ISKO will leverage MoRe Research!s expertise and resources to find ways of repurposing the clean and toxic-free cellulose powders that are created from the decomposed cotton, as well as the recycled polyester and reintegrate this back into fabric production. By using all of the outputs from the recycling of textiles back into textiles, the prospect of a closed-loop system becomes more feasible.

The investment in this new technology is the latest in ISKO’s ongoing drive for advancements in sustainability. As part of the company’s R-TWO™ program ISKO is also working to develop fabrics with a guaranteed minimum +50% GRS (Global Recycle Standard) recycled content blend. This will significantly reduce the carbon and water footprint of a fabric, as well as make it easy to trace a garment’s sustainable journey step-by-step from the beginning of the supply chain through to the end product.