From the Sector

Archroma will introduce its new Super Systems+ concept and highlight product innovations at Techtextil 2024, being held in Frankfurt, Germany from April 23 to 26.

A highlight of Archroma’s participation in Techtextil, Super Systems+ are powerful end-to-end systems that combine fiber-specific processing solutions and intelligent effects. The Super Systems+ suite encompasses wet processing solutions that deliver measurable environmental impact from sizing to finishing; durable colors and functional effects that add value and longevity to the end product; and cleaner chemistries that eliminate harmful or regulated substances.

For textile partners to the automotive industry, Archroma is introducing DOROSPERS® KHF, a new range of high-lightfast disperse dyes that provide optimum build up on polyester microfiber, including artificial suede for car interiors.

For nonwoven applications in fields such as healthcare, hygiene and filtration, Archroma recommends APPRETAN® FFX6750, a new addition to its range of high-performance zero-formaldehyde acrylic copolymers, and APPRETAN® FFX1540.

APPRETAN® FFX1540 is a new APEO free and formaldehyde free self-crosslinking polymer, medium soft with very low tackiness, and strongly hydrophobic, developed for the chemical bonding of nonwovens and for the coating of technical textiles, where low water absorption and high-water tightness are required, combined with high durability in severe environment.

For workwear and uniforms that protect people under adverse conditions, Archroma solutions include HELIZARIN® ULTRA-FAST, for printing with pigment dispersions and metallic pigments, and the new ALBAFIX® ECO Plus wet fastness improver. Archroma’s PFC-free PHOBOTEX® R-ACE durable water repellent delivers excellent water repellence while preserving fabric quality and ensuring sustainability. Archroma has also expanded the revolutionary AVITERA® SE GENERATION NEXT range of resource-saving dyes with new colors.

Further solutions for active wear and workwear include the newly launched bio-based PHOBOTEX® NTR-50 durable water repellent product, which is PFAS free, formaldehyde free and crosslinker free, as well NYLOFIXAN® HFS, a new fixing agent for polyamide and blends that is fully compliant with the latest restrictions on bisphenol compounds.

Archroma is also launching ARKOPHOB® NTR-40 at Techtextil 2024. The company’s first crosslinker with an improved sustainability profile, its monomers are partially derived from renewably sourced, plant-based raw materials. Another new innovation is biocide-free OX20, an odor-neutralizing technology launched by Archroma in partnership with SANITIZED AG.

For home textiles, mills and brands can select ARKOFIX® NZW formaldehyde-free* resin for high whiteness and extraordinary product stability, with no yellowing during storage at elevated temperatures, even over a prolonged period of time. For a super-soft handle, the SILIGEN® EH1 is a vegan silicone macro-emulsion softener with 35% plant-based active content.

Polartec® introduces Polartec® Power Shield™ RPM, made from recycled polyester materials and the Polartec® 200, and Micro Series recycled fleeces featuring Polartec® Shed Less™ technology.

Polartec® Power Shield™ RPM is a recycled polyester fabric that offers waterproofness, wind-proofness and breathability, and also ensures high-stretch comfort and resilience. With its high range of motion and highly durable 100% recycled polyester membrane designed for high intensity activities, Power Shield™ RPM elevates end use comfort and is made for runners, cyclists and golfers who refuse to trade performance for sustainability.

Polartec® Shed Less™ technology is an innovative process that decreases fiber fragment shedding during home laundering up to 85%* without compromising the performance or durability of the fabrics it’s applied to. Less shedding means fewer microfiber fragments end up in the oceans and waterways.

Polartec® Micro™ Series is engineered to provide long-lasting comfort in a vast range of conditions and activity levels. This recycled fleece with Polartec® Shed Less™ technology is made from a lofted structure with thermal air pockets to retain warmth without inhibiting breathability. Polartec® Micro™ Series is both hydrophobic and fast drying.

Polartec® 200 Series is the modern version of the original PolarFleece®, which in 1993 became the first performance fleece knit from yarn made from recycled plastic bottles. It has a great resiliency, lightweight warmth and a fast drying time.

Many end-users now expect recycled materials to be in textile products they purchase – and this is driving innovation throughout the industry. However, there are still many technical and economic issues facing yarn and fabric producers using recycled resources. Members of the Swiss Textile Machinery Association offer some effective solutions to these challenges.

Synthetic recycled materials such as PET can usually be treated similarly to new yarn, but there are additional complexities where natural fibres like wool and cotton are involved. Today, there’s a trend towards mechanically recycled wool and cotton fibres.

Spinning recycled cotton
The use of mechanically recycled fibres in spinning brings specific quality considerations: they have higher levels of short fibres and neps – and may often be colored, particularly if post-consumer material is used. It’s also true that recycled yarns have limitations in terms of fineness. The Uster Statistics 2023 edition features an extended range of fibre data, supporting sustainability goals, including benchmarks for blends of virgin and recycled cotton.
In general, short fibres such as those in recycled material can easily be handled by rotor spinning machines. For ring spinning, the shorter the fibres, the more difficult it is to guide them through the drafting zone to integrate them into the yarn body. Still, for wider yarn counts and higher yarn quality, the focus is now shifting to ring spinning. The presence of short fibres is a challenge, but Rieter offers solutions to address this issue.

Knitting recycled wool
For recycling, wool fibres undergo mechanical procedures such as shredding, cutting, and re-spinning, influencing the quality and characteristics of the resulting yarn. These operations remove the natural scales and variations in fibre length of the wool, causing a decrease in the overall strength and durability of the recycled yarn. This makes the yarn more prone to breakage, especially under the tension exerted during knitting.

Adapting to process recycled materials often requires adjustments to existing machinery. Knitting machines must be equipped with positive yarn suppliers to control fibre tension. Steiger engages in continuous testing of new yarns on the market, to check their suitability for processing on knitting machines. For satisfactory quality, the challenges intensify, with natural yarns requiring careful consideration and adaptation in the knitting processes.

From fibres to nonwovens
Nonwovens technology was born partly from the idea of recycling to reduce manufacturing costs and to process textile waste and previously unusable materials into fabric structures. Nonwovens production lines, where fibre webs are bonded mechanically, thermally or chemically, can easily process almost all mechanically and chemically recycled fibres.

Autefa Solutions offers nonwovens lines from a single source, enabling products such as liners, wipes, wadding and insulation to be produced in a true closed loop. Fibres are often used up to four times for one product.

Recycling: total strategy
Great services, technology and machines from members of Swiss Textile Machinery support the efforts of the circular economy to process recycled fibres. The machines incorporate the know-how of several decades, with the innovative power and quality standards in production and materials.
Stäubli’s global ESG (environmental, social & governance) strategy defines KPIs in the context of energy consumption, machine longevity and the recycling capacity in production units worldwide, as well in terms of machinery recyclability. The machine recyclability of automatic drawing in machines, weaving systems and jacquard machines ranges from 96 to 99%.

A major capacity expansion has been completed at AkzoNobel’s Powder Coatings site in Como, Italy, which will help secure supply to customers across Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Four new manufacturing lines are now operational following the €21 million project – two of them dedicated to automotive primers and two to architectural coatings. New bonding equipment lines have also been added, ensuring that the products meet and exceed industry standards.

The extra capacity in Como has been installed in a renovated building where powder coatings were originally made – a sustainable reuse of an existing part of the site, which was established in 1992. The new lines also use recycled energy and are focused on meeting the highest standards in sustainable production, supporting the company’s ambition to reduce its carbon emissions by 50% by 2030.

AkzoNobel’s Como site is the company’s largest plant for producing powder coatings. It supplies products for market segments, such as home appliances, architecture, automotive, furniture and more.

Avery Dennison, a leader in materials science and digital identifications solutions, has completed a project with NRVLD, a community-based agency comprising artists, technologists and media personalities who are passionate about disruptive innovation.

Avery Dennison created limited edition augmented reality T-shirts worn by the NRVLD Executive Team during ‘NRVLD’, an immersive event held during Art Basel Miami Beach in December 2023.

The 30 T-shirts were digitally connected via heat transfers featuring a QR code and image recognition. Visitors were transported to an immersive artwork metaverse, built by ARkivist. In addition to the AR experience, each garment was personalized with the wearer's contact details embedded in the NFC woven patch on the chest, providing a connection point for guests throughout the event. Both connected garment experiences were powered by Avery Dennison’s atma.io connected product cloud.

Avery Dennison will be showcasing this project at NRF 2024: Retail’s Big Show, from January 14-16 at the Javits Convention Center in New York. The connected T-shirts will feature alongside a host of apparel digital solutions for supply chain visibility, product tracking, and consumer engagement.

Michael Colarossi, vice president, innovation, product line management and sustainability, Apparel Solutions, Avery Dennison comments: “The trajectory of consumer experiences unmistakably leans towards digital, and brands are actively seeking innovative methods to engage consumers by merging traditional craftsmanship with digital creativity. In this scenario, AR acted as the conduit, and Avery Dennison's connected garment technology and on-garment Embelex branding turned that vision into tangible reality."

Pavan Bahl, founder of Bellwether Culture and co-founder NRVLD, comments: "In the Web3 sphere, blockchain technology enables ownership of digital goods and identity. Our collaboration with Avery Dennison showcases the potential of bridging this gap, illustrating the exciting possibilities in this space."

A collaboration between Deakin University researchers and Australia’s largest commercial linen supplier Simba Global is tackling a critical global issue, the spread of harmful microplastics through our laundry.

Clothing and textiles are estimated to generate up to 35 per cent of the microplastics found in the world’s oceans, making them one of the biggest contributors. But there is still a lot to be learnt about the characteristics of these microplastics and exactly how and why they are generated.

Researchers at the ARC Research Hub for Future Fibres in Deakin’s Institute for Frontier Materials (IFM) have teamed up with Simba Global, a global textile manufacturing and supply company, to better understand the extent and type of microplastics shed when their products are laundered. Simba Global wants to lead the charge to reduce the environmental impact of textiles.

Lead scientist IFM Associate Professor Maryam Naebe said working with an industry partner on the scale of Simba Global meant the research could have a huge real-world impact.

Simba Global is the major linen supplier to Australia’s hospitals, hotels and mining camps, resulting in 950,000 tonnes of textile products – including bedsheets, bath towels, scrubs and much more – going through the commercial laundering process each year. It also supplies international markets in New Zealand, Singapore and the US.

“As part of our research, we will investigate potential solutions including the pre-treatment of textiles to reduce the shedding of microplastics, or even increasing the size of the plastics that break down so they can be better captured and removed by filtration during the laundering process,” Associate Professor Naebe said.

“Microplastics are now ubiquitous in the environment, they’re in the air we breathe, the food we eat and the earth we walk on. The magnitude of the problem is bigger than previously thought.

“Of serious concern is the mounting evidence that microplastics are having a negative impact on human and animal health. There are not just physical, but chemical and biological impacts.”

Associate Professor Naebe’s team have taken the first steps in the project, analysing wastewater samples from commercial laundries with high-powered electron microscopes in their Geelong laboratory, part of the largest fibres and textiles research facility in Australia.

The team recently presented a new scientific paper at the Association of Universities for Textiles (AUTEX) Conference 2023, which started the important process of formally categorising these types of microplastics, as well as developing standard terminology and testing methods.

“Because our understanding of microplastics is still in its infancy, we needed to start right at the beginning,” Associate Professor Naebe said.

“We need to have a standard definition of what is a microplastic. Up to this point that has been lacking, which makes it difficult to compare and incorporate other studies in this area.

“We are now developing a systematic method for sampling and identifying microplastics in laundry wastewater. It has been tricky to measure the different sizes, but this is important information to have. For example, there are studies that suggest some sizes of microplastics are causing more issues in certain animals.

“The next step will be establishing an essential method to prevent the release of microplastics from textile laundering. This may involve a coating on the surface of the textile or better ways to collect the waste during the washing process.”

Simba Global Executive Chair Hiten Somaia said the company had a strong focus on sustainability, driven by the business’ purpose statement.

“We are proud to partner with Deakin University in what is the first significant research into textile microplastic pollution in Australia. What we are most excited about is sharing the results of this research with all other textile markets in Australia – including clothing – and putting an end to microplastic pollution from textiles.”

ALLIED Feather + Down, global leaders in high performance, ethically sourced down, and MN Inter-Fashion, manufacturers of high performance luxury outerwear, announced that the ALLIED Feather + Down outerwear collection will be available to the European market.  

Originally released only in Japan, the exclusive collection will be available to select European boutique retailers for the fall 2024 season. Limited to a few hundred pieces, this line will showcase the breadth of ALLIED’s down offering, from their industry-leading ExpeDRY down insulation to their exceedingly high performance 1000 fill power down. It will also include MN Inter-Fashion’s experience delivering quality design and craftsmanship to some of the best known fashion houses in the world.

Designed, cut, and sewn by MN Inter-Fashion in Japan using materials from ALLIED and Pertex, the jackets shall represent a collision between cutting edge fashion aesthetics and materials normally reserved for highly technical outerwear. The result is a unique garment with a sophisticated urban look blended with performance that rivals the most technical outdoor apparel available. 

Archroma is bringing its most impactful planet-conscious innovations, including SuperSystems+, to ChromaTexChem 2023 in Mumbai from December 19-20.

Super Systems+ is a new set of end-to-end systems that combine processing solutions and intelligent effects for the entire textile processing workflow, from sizing to finishing. Developed for different end-use segments – from blue and colored denim to performance athletic wear, bottom weights, towels and sheeting – Super Systems+ aims to empower fashion and textile brands and mills to add value to their products while they deliver measurable environmental impact and enhance production efficiency.

Super Systems+ leverages the industry’s broadest product portfolio and authentic evidence-based data to support informed decision making. It is supported by The SafeEdge by Archroma, an online portal that gives Archroma customers and brands real-time access to product-related regulatory and compliance certifications and information, as well as the Archroma ONE WAY Impact Calculator, a process simulation and calculation tool designed and used by our textile processing experts to provide our customers and partners with an accurate estimate of the process costs, resource utilization, effluent discharge quality, and CO₂ emissions of the existing production process and of the newly evaluated system. These help them to select solutions that meet their performance requirements and deliver against significant sustainability targets.

The data and the information reported examine the performance relative to the companies Marchi & Fildi S.p.A. and Filidea S.r.l. during the year 1st January 2022 to 31st December 2022. In addition, with the aim of putting the data into a context of developments, a comparison with data pertaining to 2021 was also made.

Amongst the numerous data and insights provided by the analyses given in the Report, some relevant performance factors relating to environmental achievements emerge.

With reference to Marchi & Fildi, and in comparison to 2021, the year 2022 demonstrated:

• A unit reduction in water consumption of 57% and unit reduction of waste water of 19%
• A unit reduction in electric power consumption of 13%

An overall reduction in CO2 emissions (Scope I + Scope II) of 22% In the same period, for Filidea the following results are shown:

• A unit reduction in water consumption of 26%, unit waste water of 22%
• A reduction in unit natural gas consumption of 7%
• A reduction in unit electric power consumption of 14%
• An overall reduction in CO2 emissions (Scope I + Scope II) of 7%

These data offer quantitative feedback on the constant commitment to the optimisation of resources and use of production technologies with low energy impact, which the Group has adopted for years.

Massimo Marchi, Marchi & Fildi’s President, has this to say about the choice to invest in this form of reporting:
“The decision to write a Sustainability Report represents for us one of the elements which guide us towards the constant improvement of company performance with reference to ESG. This is one of the stages towards the formalisation of a strategic plan for the management of sustainability, a journey which the Group has been committed to for years and in which we believe 100%.”

HeiQ introduces a 100% biobased and long-lasting cosmetic finishing technology for textiles to the market. The newest addition to the HeiQ portfolio harnesses the power of active probiotics and selected prebiotics to enhance the skin microbiome, turning the human’s largest organ into the best-looking one.

HeiQ Skin Care is a synbiotic textile finish aimed at providing a balanced microbiome for glowing skin, even after repeated use and washing of textiles. Unlike conventional products, HeiQ Skin Care utilizes slow-release prebiotics and probiotics seamlessly integrated into a biobased textile matrix, enriching the skin's microbiome diversity, and offering long-lasting cosmetic benefits.

The synergistic combination of prebiotics and probiotics, known as synbiotics, delivers a soothing cosmetic skin treatment while relaxing, working, or sleeping. Probiotics not only restore and improve the skin's natural balance but also enhance its self-repair capabilities. Synbiotics promote skin renewal, rebalancing, and improved appearance, reducing the signs of aging and establishing a favorable environment for the skin's natural repair mechanisms.

A second skin that takes care of the first
The skin, the largest organ in human body, is home to a diverse community of microorganisms called the skin microbiome. It plays a crucial role in maintaining good skin condition, acting as a protective barrier against harmful agents. However, various factors, such as hormones, diet, smoking, environmental exposures, and excessive UV radiation, can disrupt its balance, leading to skin conditions like rashes, acne, psoriasis, rosacea, skin irritation, redness, eczema, and odor. Maintaining a balanced skin microbiome is essential for preserving skin integrity.

HeiQ Skin Care is suitable for all textile fibers, both natural and synthetic, and can be applied to all textile items that come in direct contact with the skin. This versatility makes it an ideal choice for daily use- at work, during sports, leisure activities, or as bedding items like bed sheets and pillows.

Intensive wear trials conducted during the development stage have proven the consistent release of synbiotics (prebiotics and probiotics) onto the skin, creating conditions to foster a well-balanced microbiome.