From the Sector

Outdoor apparel company Patagonia and circular fashion and textile technology group Infinited Fiber Company have signed a multiyear sales agreement for Infinited Fiber Company’s unique, premium-quality regenerated textile fiber Infinna™, which is created out of textile waste. The move marks a major milestone for both companies towards making textile circularity an everyday reality: The deal guarantees Patagonia access to the limited-supply fiber over the coming years and secures future sales income for Infinited Fiber Company as it ramps up production.

Infinna is a unique, virgin-quality regenerated textile fiber with the soft and natural look and feel of cotton. It is created from cotton-rich textile waste that is broken down at the molecular level and reborn as new fibers. Because it’s made of cellulose – a building block of all plants – Infinna is biodegradable and contains no microplastics to clog our seas. Clothes made with it can be recycled again in the same process together with other textile waste.

In April, Infinited Fiber Company announced plans to build a flagship factory in Finland to meet the growing demand for Infinna from global fashion brands. It is currently supplying customers from its R&D and pilot facilities in Espoo and Valkeakoski, Finland. The planned flagship factory will have an annual production capacity of 30,000 metric tons, which is enough fiber for roughly 100 million T-shirts made with 100% Infinna. Infinited Fiber Company expects to have sold the new factory’s entire output for several years during 2021.

More than 92 million metric tons of textile waste is produced globally every year and most of this ends up in landfills or incinerators. At the same time, textile fiber demand is increasing, with Textile Exchange estimating the global textile fiber market to grow 30% to 146 million metric tons by 2030 from 111 million metric tons in 2019. Infinited Fiber Company’s fiber regeneration technology, which uses cellulose-rich waste streams as its raw material, offers a solution both to stop waste from being wasted and to reduce the burden of the textile industry on the planet’s limited natural resources.

Teijin Limited announced today that its Tenax™ carbon fiber prepreg has been adopted for a part of nacelle, or streamlined housing, for next-generation aircraft engine to be used by Airbus. A prototype of the nacelle part, which Nikkiso Co., Ltd. is developing for Airbus’s Propulsion of Tomorrow project, will be delivered to Airbus by the end of 2021.

The Tenax™ prepreg used for the nacelle part was developed especially for aircraft applications using high-performance and rapid-curing epoxy resin. Notably, the Tenax™ prepreg can be molded at a lower temperature and in a shorter time than conventional prepregs for aircraft applications. In addition to general autoclave molding, the Tenax™ prepreg also is suited to press molding for mass production, achieving excellent quality required for aircraft applications. Furthermore, it is compatible with automated fiber placement (AFP) therefore can be combined with automatic laminating technology and short-time molding to maximize production efficiency. The excellent productivity and cost efficiency of the Tenax™ prepreg were key reasons why it was adopted for Nikkiso’s nacelle.

Teijin is intensively accelerating its development of mid- to downstream applications for aircraft, one of the strategic focuses of its medium-term management plan for 2020-2022. Going forward, Teijin intends to further strengthen its carbon fiber and intermediate material businesses to contribute to increasing global sustainability, aiming to become a company that supports the society of the future.

Archroma, a global leader in specialty chemicals towards sustainable solutions, announced the release of its Sustainability Report for its fiscal year 2020.

Prepared again in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards, and building on a strong track record, the report outlines the company’s progress on its priority sustainability topics, such as human health and environmental safety, resource efficiency, sustainable sourcing and product stewardship, as well as diversity & inclusion, and talent management.

For the first time Archroma conducted a survey with its stakeholders to confirm the relevance of the sustainability topics covered in the report. These include biodiversity, occupational and product safety, and fair labor practices, as well as maybe less expected topics such as compliance, economic performance, and culture.

The report can be downloaded at: www.archroma.com/sustainability.

Contact restrictions, home office and altered daily lives – our lives in 2020 were radically changed. This was also the case for various sectors of the economy, including the textile and clothing industry. However, with crisis come opportunities and stimuli for change. Under the motto “Still Physical”, manufacturers recount their personal success stories in 2020 – the industry can look forward to a selection of sustainable materials curated exclusively by the PERFORMANCE FORUM Jury. Areas of focus: natural fibers that highlight wellbeing aspects, plant-based materials that make us strong and excite on an emotional level, bio-nylons and bio-based finishings that rethink function. “Still Physical – Your Success Story of 2020” will be on display online as the first of its kind within a trade fair week from 17 to 21 May 2020.

Transformation: Technology first?
The pandemic has forced us into new, primarily digital forms of living and working. Our daily lives are characterised by home offices, home schooling and online meetings. The desire for real, physically perceptible experiences has grown incessantly within the last year. In the same context, people nowadays are strongly driven by technological progress – yet how far can we allow technological change to go and how do we wish to live in the future? Long before the pandemic, the trend towards self-monitoring and control of important bodily functions developed. The sports industry developed tools to measure levels of performance and monitor bodily functions with the goal of enhancing performance. Self-optimisation, body shaping and health promotion have become standard nowadays. Staying healthy and keeping fit are now social imperatives in our performance-oriented society. The pandemic has made us rethink, made us pause – with sustainable function still in focus, yet function needs to be rethought for the future, distancing ourselves from mere performance enhancement, and embracing clothing that facilitates people in feeling good.

Touch & Feel
In a visual, digital world, one sense has been forgotten: the sense of touch. Materials trigger completely different reactions, consciously or unconsciously. Moreover, the surface texture is also decisive in the functionality of a fabric, lending it its unique characteristics. In times of contact restrictions and lockdown, there is a need for a space for emotions, for regeneration and physical wellbeing. This is also reflected in the desire for appropriate apparel that leaves a pleasant sensation on the skin. Lightweight, warm and of a softer nature, plant-based fibers fulfil the desire for comfort and promote wellbeing.

We are physical – we are nature
How will we shape and adapt the post-pandemic textile and apparel industry? The Corona crisis once again reminds us of our existential bond with the natural world. While humanity fights against the spread of a deadly virus with social isolation, one thing is doing well: our planet. It is recovering from all the exhaust gases that are released into the air daily by cars and factories. There is a shift in focus towards taking time out in nature, whether in the form of a morning run, a mountain hike or a yoga session on the grass.

Your success story of 2020
What has touched them? Which experiences have shaped their latest innovations? Does the crisis also present opportunities? The chance for something new, for a rethink, on an even more sustainable, more ecological path? Which highlights, which stories are worth communicating and where did the focus lie in 2020? Various material manufacturers already started to focus on sustainability and the cautious use of resources some time ago. Innovations in the areas of materials and in processing methods are the driving forces of the development towards more sustainability. However, we need to realign all processes and structures in our supply and production chains and adapt them to the needs of a resource-conserving, responsible industry. A pioneering example of such alignment was the decision of PERFORMANCE DAYS to only present sustainable materials at the PERFORMANCE FORUM from the November 2019 trade fair event onwards. Additionally, the setting-up of the new digital sourcing platform “THE LOOP” shows how technology can be implemented aside from material and processing innovations in such a way that our procedures and structures can be adapted to difficult conditions.

Informative & up-to-date: the digital trade fair week from 17 to 21 May 2021
As usual, the highlighted fabrics from the Focus Topic “Still Physical”, which the exhibitors have defined as their personal success stories, will be available shortly on the PERFORMANCE DAYS website highlighting all details and facets.