From the Sector

Suominen launches a carbon neutral nonwoven, BIOLACE® Zero. BIOLACE® Zero is suitable for many kinds of wiping applications like baby, personal care, and household wipes. It has wet and dry strength and it’s very soft. It is made of 100% cellulosic lyocell fibers and the product is 100% biodegradable, compostable and plastic free.

BIOLACE® Zero utilizes VEOCEL™ Lyocell fibers from Suominen´s long-term partner Lenzing. BIOLACE® Zero is made of 100% carbon neutral VEOCEL™ Lyocell fibers.

“We are very excited to introduce BIOLACE® Zero, which is not just Suominen´s first carbon neutral product, but also one of the first carbon neutral nonwovens on the market. BIOLACE® Zero will be available as part of Suominen's sustainable product portfolio”, says Marika Mäkilä, Senior Manager, Category Management, Europe.

Suominen’s BIOLACE® Zero and Lenzing’s VEOCEL™ Lyocell fibers are certified as carbon neutral products by globally recognized company, ClimatePartner. Carbon neutrality means that the greenhouse gas emissions of nonwoven have been calculated – from the raw material production to the client’s production facility – reduced and are offset through certified carbon offset projects.

“With this new carbon neutral product BIOLACE® Zero we are able to support our customers in their greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets. Innovating new products in collaboration with partners such as Lenzing by using carbon neutral VEOCEL™ Lyocell fibers is well aligned with our strategy and vision to be the frontrunner in sustainable nonwovens”, says Noora Rantanen, Manager, Sustainability & Marketing.

According to the United Nations Conference of Trade and Development, the fashion and textile industry represents one of the major polluters of water in the world, with an estimated 93 billion cubic metres of water used per year.

On the occasion of Water Day, C.L.A.S.S. CEO and Founder Giusy Bettoni talked to Sensil® BioCare, Kornit, Ecoalf and Unesco on how their strategies and processes can preserve our most precious, yet limited resource.

Key Takeaways from the Speakers:
"The ocean is absolutely crucial for the survival of this planet, since it almost covers 71 percent of its surface. Writer Arthur Clarke once said: how inappropriate is to call this planet earth, when it is clearly planet ocean."
- Francesca Santoro, Programme Specialist at IOC UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe

"Sensil® BioCare is our solution to reduce the persistence of textile waste in the ocean. We embedded technology in it so that if any microfiber is released in the washing, they will break down faster than conventional nylon. Based on an external study, we have seen an almost 60 percent microplastic reduction in two years"
- Michelle Lea, Vice President Global Marketing at Nilit

"When it comes to our printing processes, almost no water is in use and the waste is minimal. We have never seen this before in this industry. Based on LCA tests, when compared to screen printing our "Atlas Max" printer saves up to 93 percent of water, while the "Presto" printer saves up to 95 percent of water".
- Michal Arbel, Sustainability Communication Lead at Kornit Digital

"One of the most important projects of the company is Upcycling the Oceans, with the aim of tackling the marine litter in collaboration with the fishing sector. Last year, we collected 300 tons of litter from the seabed, and we promoted circular economy by transforming the waste in products."
- Irene Diez, Director at Ecoalf Foundation

Five players in the textile service industry announce the establishment of Cibutex (Circular Business Textiles). This new cooperative is dedicated to the recycling and recovery of fibres from discarded textiles. Cibutex wants to contribute to a circular textile chain through cooperation in the whole sector.

The textile service has been implementing key Circular Economy solutions for some time: rental, care, repair and reuse of textiles for professional use. "As an industry, we are in a position to delve even deeper into the world of the circular economy. Every linen rental company has many of the same products, which go through the same process every time: the textiles are washed, sorted and collected again after the period of use. After many washes, the textiles are rejected. With this rejected textile, we see a unique opportunity to finally put the idea of a closed textile chain into practice. The used textiles that have reached the end of their useful life can be recycled on an industrial scale and the fibre raw materials can be recovered to make new textiles. We want to exploit this potential to the full by founding Cibutex, a cooperative for all textile service providers in Europe," says Cibutex director Jan Lamme, explaining the background of the unique project.

Cross-competitive goal
The founders of Cibutex are four well-known, competing textile service companies and one supply partner: Blycolin Textile Services (Zaltbommel, NL), Dibella (Aalten), Edelweiss Groep (The Hague), Lamme Textile Management (Amsterdam, NL) and Nedlin (Elsloo, NL). The companies have deliberately joined forces in order to implement sustainability in textiles and clothing by means of closed material cycles throughout the sector.

"Important resources are hidden in our B2B used textiles. We want to recover these in cooperation with relevant recycling companies and thus promote textile recycling as demanded by the EU Commission. We have come together to achieve sufficient critical mass to determine the final recycling of our discarded laundry, with the goal of moving from textiles to textiles," says co-founder Luuk de Win (Nedlin).

Sustainable eco-balance
"By recycling the raw materials of our used textiles, we contribute to reducing the social, environmental and climate impacts of the textile industry related to cultivation and production, and this leads to a long-term improvement of the ecological footprint of our industry," adds co-founder Marc van Boekholt (Blycolin).

Increasing value
To make the final transformation step of the circular economic model "textile service" a success, any European textile service company can become a member of Cibutex. The cooperative takes care of the collection, transport to the recycling partners and remuneration for the old textiles, which are now limited to bed linen, table linen and bath linen. In the future, however, the group wants to develop solutions for other textiles as well. For example, the recycling of workwear is also on the agenda. The founders of Cibutex agree that this too is a treasure trove of resources that must be addressed.

• Long-awaited metal-free* and halogen-free* NYLOSAN® S NAVY and BLACK COLORS for Sportwear
• Iconic black and navy polyamides of major sportswear brands can finally be perfectly matched with safer dyestuffs
• Significant resource savings when dyeing with Archroma new signature CONSCIOUSLY DEEP system

Archroma, a global leader in specialty chemicals towards sustainable solutions, today announced the addition of two new metal-free* and halogen-free* acid dyes in its Nylosan® S range.

Dark shades represent approximately 80% of the outdoor and sportswear textile market, which is also under pressure to offer more sustainable articles. In this context, the new Nylosan® Navy S-3R and Black S-3N, especially developed by Archroma for polyamides and blends, meet four long-standing market demands for blacks and navies.

• First, the Nylosan® S range offers metal-free* alternatives to dyestuff generally used to dye polyamide and nylon and which usually contain metals. The new Nylosan® Navy S-3R and Black S-3N are taking the industry standard one step further by offering a halogen-free* option to those manufacturers, brands and retailers who are looking to offer the safest grade available.
• Second, the Nylosan® S range now comprises a wide gamut of colors, with these new dyes targeting the color matching and fastness specifications of the iconic blacks and navies of major sportswear brands. In order to support this color matching process, Archroma makes available the colorimetric dye primaries for the mills in order to (re)match the color standards.
• Third, the new navy and black dyes display the same color constancy as the dyes used in many leading color standards, which means the navy and black colors created with Nylosan® S range will be non-metameric to the color standard under multiple light sources, whether artificial or natural, indoor or outdoor.
• And fourth, the introduction of the new Nylosan® Black S-3N makes dyeing a metal-free* black on polyamide finally possible – something that was not available before.

Both dyes display the other usual features allowed of the Nylosan® S range, i.e., high fastness and buildup, and a wide shading gamut for industry-leading metal-free* acid dyes. They are REACH registered and bluesign® approved.

In addition, with the new Nylosan® Navy S-3R and Black S-3N at the core of its new CONSCIOUSLY DEEP system, Archroma is offering another very welcome benefit in the production of polyamide articles: resource saving. As most sportswear manufacturers and brands know, creating durable dark colors on nylon is a complex process that uses massive amounts of water and energy. Archroma therefore designed the new CONSCIOUSLY DEEP system to allow a highly efficient scour dyeing process reduced from 6 to 2 baths. This results into reducing the process time by up to 36%, water consumption by up to 64%, energy by up to 46%, and CO2 emissions by up to 41% compared to conventional benchmark process.

ITM 2022, which will be held at Istanbul Tüyap Fair and Congress Center on 14-18 June 2022, will be the first and largest international textile machinery exhibition to be held after a 3-year break. The leading brands of world textile technologies will launch their latest machines at ITM 2022.
The latest ITM Exhibition hosted the world textile industry with 1200 exhibitors from 64 countries and 60,000 visitors from 94 countries. ITM 2022 Exhibition in cooperation with TEMSAD and in partnership with Tüyap Tüm Fuarcılık Inc. and Teknik Exhibitions Inc. plans to set new records as one of the most important global organizations to be organized after the pandemic outbreak period.

The textile industry, which is among the leading sectors in Turkey's exports, demonstrated its power to the whole world, especially during the pandemic outbreak period. Achieving an increase of up to 40 percent in exports of textiles and raw materials, Turkey also broke records after records in medical textile, technical textile, and indoor textile exports.

Ranking in the top three in the most important market for the European textile machinery manufacturers, Turkey also attracted attention with its production performance during the troublesome pandemic outbreak. Many European machinery manufacturers, who spoke highly of Turkey's performance, announced that their machinery sales to Turkey increased in 2020 and 2021. Turkish textile companies, which increase their production capacity because they were unable to keep up with the demands, continue their new investments and modernizations.

Leading brands of textile technologies such as Picanol, Itema, Toyota, Saurer, Rieter and Trützschler are among the companies that will exhibit their latest innovations at the ITM 2022.

The Spanish recycling company Anviplas has been involved in plastics recycling for more than 30 years, during which time it has built up extensive know-how that now benefits customers throughout Europe, in Africa and in Asia. Their cooperation with EREMA is almost as long. Since 1991, Anviplas has relied on the technology and service provided by the Austrian recycling machine manufacturer.

Employing 64 people, Anviplas recycles post-industrial and post-consumer plastic waste, especially HD and LD-PE as well as PP, to make recycled pellets in all colour variations. The production capacity is 1,800 tonnes per month. An EREMA type INTAREMA® 1716 TVEplus® recycling machine with screen changer is in operation at the site in Navarcles (Barcelona) for processing the PP material stream. This patented extruder system was developed for handling difficult-to-process materials, such as heavily printed films as well as very moist waste. This machine is characterised by its optimised 3-stage degassing system; firstly by preheating and predrying the material in the preconditioning unit, secondly because the screw design allows reverse degassing, and thirdly in the degassing zone of the extruder.

Anviplas customers manufacture a huge bandwidth of products made using their recycled pellets. They range from various film products, such as stretch, shrink, mulch and silage films, to irrigation, corrugated and high-pressure pipes, as well as containers such as tubs, bottles, barrels and crates.

In February 2022 the Repeats Group, a pan-European platform for LDPE recycling, and Anviplas announced, that Repeats has made an investment in the Spanish recycling company. For Repeats this investment in Anviplas represents an important step in building a pan-European plastics recycling platform.

TEXO AB, a member of TMAS, the Swedish textile machinery association, is currently seeing a surge in demand for its Compfelt weaving looms for press felt base fabrics.

“These are far from standard machines,” explains TEXO President Anders Svensson. “Off-the-shelf industrial weaving machines generally range in their working widths from 1.9 to 3.2 metres, with those purpose-built for technical applications such as geotextiles extending to wider widths of six metres and beyond. Meanwhile, one of the machines we have recently successfully delivered and commissioned has a working width of 23 metres and is not even the widest of the many such machines the company has engineered and delivered worldwide since its formation.”

A second recently-delivered line has a more modest working width – in relative terms – of 13 metres.

Paper machines
The demand for such machines comes from the suppliers of paper machine clothing (PMC) to paper mills, who in turn operate colossal machines for paper manufacturing.
On of the largest paper making machines is currently believed to be located on Hainan Island off the southern coast of China and is 428 metres long – roughly the length of four football pitches. Naturally, such machines require equally large-scale components, which is where TEXO comes in. All paper machines require a regular supply of PMC fabrics which are employed in three separate areas of the paper machine – the forming section, the press section and the drying section.

Press felts
TEXO Compfelt weaving machines are specifically employed for the production of endless (tubular) woven base fabrics for the press section of paper machines, where water is mechanically removed from the newly formed sheet of fibres. In the simplest press, the sheet is carried by the PMC fabric between two rolls, where water is squeezed out by the application of load and pressure. This can also be assisted by the use of vacuum and heat. The PMC fabrics here need to be replaced regularly, with a maximum lifespan of six months.

Press felts have become increasingly sophisticated over the years, consisting of complex woven base structures which are subsequently combined with nonwovens via needlepunching on equally huge machines. The woven base fabrics are primarily made from polyamide for its strength and hygroscopic and elastic properties.

Dobby harness
“A major refinement of the machine has been the ability to equip it with up to 24 dobby harness frames to meet the demand for sophisticated structures from the PMC manufacturers. Although the PMC business represents a small proportion of the total cost of manufacturing paper, it can have a significant impact on the quality of the paper, the efficiency of a machine and machine production rates.”

Another significant development has been that of a self supporting base pre-filled with concrete, which has eliminated the need to dig out foundations in a plant to support the machine.

Retrofits
TEXO’s looms are built to last, but technology moves forward, and the company is also currently active in the retrofitting of existing machines built as far back as the 1970s.

Integration
TEXO has also just integrated its offices and production centre at its base in Älmhult, Sweden, to create a unified 5,000 square metre site.

Hexcel Corporation hosted customers and public officials at its manufacturing site in the Midparc Free Trade Zone in Casablanca as the company broke ground on an expansion that will double the size of its existing engineered core manufacturing operation in Morocco to meet increased demand from aerospace customers for lightweight advanced composites.

The expansion, announced in September 2021, is expected to be completed in early 2023. The plant size will double to 24,000 square meters and employment is expected to increase from 120 to 400 people when the expansion is completed.

The Casablanca facility was built as part of Hexcel’s ongoing worldwide investment to create a diversified and robust global supply chain to support aerospace customers’ growing demand for engineered core. At the plant, Hexcel transforms lightweight honeycomb materials into engineered core parts to reinforce structures in the aerospace industry, particularly for aircraft, engine nacelles, and helicopter blades.

At the event, Thierry Merlot, Hexcel President – Aerospace for Europe, MEA/AP & Industrial, said, “We are pleased to celebrate this milestone with our customers and with the local community. The increased demand for lightweight, aerodynamic, advanced composites is growing, and our customers including Safran, Airbus, Airbus Atlantic, Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems have shown confidence in our ability to meet that demand. We appreciate the support from them as well as from the Ministry and everyone in the local community who continue providing us with the opportunity to further our investment in Morocco. The very successful establishment of Hexcel, the qualification of the workforce, the support of the state and the proximity of our customers have been real assets to launch this extension of our site in Casablanca.”

• DUARTE  brings on the runway its SEASON 2 “Eco-Street Dance” collection

By mixing C.L.A.S.S. responsible materials, colorful prints, urban feels and artistic inspiration, the Portuguese streetwear brand creates a new style and a clear yet cool message for conscious fashion consumers.  The rewarded 2021 C.L.A.S.S. Icon Award Portuguese brand Duarte is ready to presents its Fall/Winter 2022/23 collection developed in collaboration with C.L.A.S.S. Eco Hub at ModaLisboa after a first presentation at Milan Fashion Week. From February 24th until 27th, Duarte’s creations have been featured as a special project at WSM (WHITE Sustainable Milano) platform space inside “Unveiling the fashion Backstage”, a docu-event focusing on an immersive journey into the amazing world of premium and smart supply chains that make innovative and responsible fashion wardrobes a reality.

For its second collection Duarte still counts on C.L.A.S.S. support in sourcing materials and communication activities as part of the Icon Award yearly program. The streetwear designer Ana Duarte, with the help of the Milanese hub, is back with a renewed collection that counts 40 pieces continuing the concept and the story behind the previous World Keeper: the irresistible superhero Tadao - Ana Duarte’s dog – fighting against the environmental issues created by mankind and personified as Smog Man (air pollution), Fire Man (climate change), Deforestation Man (forests destruction) and Wave Man (water overconsumption). 

This time the inspiration is also Street Dance drawn directly from the city streets, with majorly unisex pieces (apart from some small specific details linked to sizes or ergonomics) and materials that both respect the planet and keep you warm. The prints drawn from ripped posters giving birth to a sort of new style that we can name “Eco-Street Dance”. The color palette explores the dark shades of grey, cream, blue and black, with artistic pops of color of a hopeful urban culture that tears apart posters from the past and turns them into a new brighter story. 

Talking about materials, the collection presents a selection of urban pieces for everyday superheroes, fighting against environmental issues - with a holistic approach to sustainability values thanks to the synergy with C.L.A.S.S. and its Back in the Loop area: a section dedicated to alternative and sustainable sourcing against the massive amount of materials and textiles produced that are not used and discarded by the fashion system. This is mostly powered by MAEBA International - and its ReLiveTex® fabrics - leader in selecting and repurposing premium Italian fabrics with exceptional 60 years of expertise in collecting high quality materials from leading brands and textile manufacturers, and the first company at an international level to be accredited for the UNI EN ISO 14021 certification which grants the traceability of the collected materials.

The linings complete the full sustainable picture, thanks to Bemberg™ by Asahi Kasei fabrics by Gianni Crespi Foderami. Bemberg™ is a new generation material made from the smart-tech transformation of cotton linter pre-consumer material, converted through a traceable and transparent closed loop process. Entirely made in Japan, it comes with Compostability and Ecotoxicity Certifications verified by Innovhub SSI, RCS, OEKOTEX® Standard 100 and the Eco Mark certifications. The factory is ISO 14001 certified, too. 

Display graphics print providers now have a powerful solution for saving media and reducing prep time with newly available EFI™ Fiery® Prep-it™ true-shape nesting and cut-preparation software. The newly available solution from Electronics For Imaging, Inc. connects to any digital front end (DFE) – including full integration with EFI Fiery proServer and Fiery XF DFEs – to increase the profitability of cut jobs printed on wide- to superwide-format inkjet printers.

Media and time savings

Automated cut job preparation

Economic advantages for all display graphics businesses

Whether print businesses do their nesting layouts manually in Adobe® Illustrator®, or use an existing nesting solution, switching to Fiery Prep-it software offers compelling productivity gains and media savings. It has some of the best true-shape nesting technology on the market, including its 1° increment rotation capability and accurate double-sided nesting, giving users the ability to reduce media waste and turnaround time even further.

On top of its ability to generate at least 10% in media savings, Fiery Prep-it also increases profitability by:

• Giving companies the ability to win more tight-deadline business by preparing cut jobs in a fraction of the time required with manual nesting methods
• Reducing errors and expensive rework due to minimal touchpoints in job production with hot folders and automation capabilities
• Removing production bottlenecks with increased utilization of existing printing and cutting equipment.

The software integrates with EFI Fiery proServer and Fiery XF DFE print servers, providing access to an additional 1,300+ cutter and router types on top of built-in Prep-it connectivity options. The software can also connect to any RIP or DFE that accepts PDF files, serving as a central hub for cut job preparation.