From the Sector

C.L.A.S.S. continues its path of "strategic sustainable synergies" with the aim of sharing its message of responsible innovation, and returns for the second time to Milan Fashion Week with WSM White Sustainable Milano. The objective is to represent a selected and smart path of the production chain related to materials, technologies, production, customization, finishing processes and dyes that are increasingly less impactful on the environment.
 
After debuting last February, “Unveiling the Fashion Backstage”, the educational and narrative journey of WSM | White Sustainable Milano developed in synergy with Giusy Bettoni, founder and CEO of C.L.A.S.S., returns to the VISCONTI HALL and grows in terms of attendance and thematic areas.

The exhibiting copmpanies are: Bemberg™ by Asahi Kasei, Maeba International, Linificio e Canapificio Nazionale SB, Edmos, Toyoshima, Iluna Group and YKK.

In cooperation with Platte Berlin, deadHYPE, Visionary Services and the Fashion Council Germany, The Ground invited to the Studio2Retail block party in Mitte. 950 guests, including creatives, influencers and the young Gen-Z Berlin fashion scene, came together for the first time since The Ground premiered in July to exchange and celebrate change.

The community had the exclusive opportunity to buy the limited pieces of the MUST-HAVE PEACE charity collection, which the Premium Group team initiated to support the people suffering from the war in Ukraine.

The collection includes 22 special items of clothing and accessories from 11 brands and designers from the Premium Group cosmos, of which 100% of the proceeds go to Be an Angel.

Be an Angel e.V. is an initiative of people from creative industries who are committed to the sustainable integration of people with a refugee background. Under the direction of Chairman Andreas Tölke, the team has been working intensively for the people from Ukraine for weeks, organising trips to Germany for refugees from Moldova, activating a nationwide network for accommodation and supplying hospitals in Odessa, Kyiv and Lemberg with medicine.

The substance graphene can become increasingly important as a component in textile catalysts when purifying water from textile dyeing as has been shown in a recently completed doctoral project at the University of Borås.

In his project, Milad Asadi, a new doctor in Textile Technology, has modified conventional yarn by encapsulating iron particles in graphene and developed a multifunctional smart e-textile. The focus was on developing a method for purifying wastewater from textile dyeing. The smart e-textile acts as a catalyst that causes the substance hydrogen peroxide to be formed, which is needed in order to break down pollutants in wastewater.

The project has generated a complete textile reactor for the treatment of wastewater through the so-called electro-Fenton technology, which is mainly used industrially to purify wastewater. The novelty of the technology is to use the properties of both graphene and iron, which is the main catalyst.

“Previous research has mainly been about the treatment of wastewater by using chemicals to break down the textile dyes. My project is the first where graphene, which is electrically conductive, is used to encapsulate iron. The e-textile can also be used several times, unlike when chemicals are used and which are then rinsed off. The challenge in the project was to scale up the technology so that the treated yarn can be fed into automatic knitting machines”, explained Milad Asadi.

The e-textile catalyst can be reused and hydrogen peroxide is formed internally inside the reactor, which reduces the use of biological catalysts, making the technology more sustainable compared to chemical methods.

• Monomaterial solution contains renewably-sourced polypropylene from the Bornewables™ portfolio of circular polyolefins
• Trexel employs its proprietary MuCell® technology to deliver a range of lightweighting benefits
• EverMinds™ in action: reuse and design for recycling are focus of value chain collaboration

Borealis and Trexel, an expert in foaming injection and blow moulded parts, announce that they have co-developed a new plastic bottle based on a grade from the Bornewables™ portfolio of polyolefins made using renewable feedstocks derived 100% from waste and residue streams. The lightweight bottle – which will be showcased at the Borealis stand at the K 2022 (from 19 to 26 October 2022 in Düsseldorf) – is reusable and fully recyclable. It boasts a significantly lower overall CO₂ footprint because it is composed of renewably-sourced feedstock and produced in the foaming process.

The Bornewables™ portfolio of circular polyolefins helps reduce the carbon footprint while offering material performance equal to virgin polymers. Using Bornewables grades allows for design freedom and colour flexibility, and helps retain a premium look and feel. The grades – which are commercially available in Europe – help conserve natural resources because they are derived solely from waste and residue streams, for example from used cooking oil. Reusing waste already in circulation instead of fossil fuel-based feedstocks enhances the sustainability of applications made using the Bornewables grades.

The reusable new bottle developed by Borealis and Trexel retains its value over many life cycles thanks to the use of Trexel’s proprietary technology in tandem with Bornewables grades; as a material solution, the new bottle minimises the use of valuable raw materials. Moreover, converters consume less energy in the production process when using the MuCell® technology. The bottle thus helps close the loop on plastics circularity by way of design for recycling, the use of renewable feedstocks, and excellent material performance across multiple life cycles.

Turkish company, Makroser Tekstil specialises in manufacturing digitally printed carpets and over the years has become one of the leading suppliers in the sector. Utilising Mimaki’s high-performance TS300P-1800 sublimation transfer printer since 2020, the company has optimised their production potential to meet increasing customer expectations in this growing digital textile carpet market.

Alongside carpets, the company also offers other solutions to the carpet industry by producing backing and other materials

Acting as both a seller and a supplier, Makroser Tekstil has an approximate monthly output of 150,000 square meters of final product and sells about 70-80,000 square meters of intermediate goods per month. “Our market has four main pillars, including chain market groups, export, e-commerce and our own retail network. We have gained serious momentum in the sales of our final products in recent years, and we attach great importance to our sales and marketing processes, in addition to production, so to increase our profitability. We are currently exporting 35-40% of our production, and our branding and e-commerce activities show that we are making significant improvements”, says Makroser Tekstil’s co-founder, Talha Güldest.

Makroser Tekstil decided to invest in a Mimaki TS300P-1800 sublimation transfer printer back in August 2020, with the aim to strengthen their position in the digitally printed carpet market. “The investment in the TS300P-1800 has enabled us to have the capacity to respond quickly to e-commerce orders,” Güldeste commented. “Product quality is the main criterion in the supplies we provide to both online and retail outlets. We made this investment because we saw that we would increase our quality and customer satisfaction in the carpets we print. The Mimaki printer met our expectations, providing the results we wanted from the very first print after installation.” Considering the increased demand, Güldeste aims to further boost their printing capacity with investment in several more Mimaki printers.

A new fabric inspection technique for accurately detecting the most subtle of defects on patterned fabrics during high speed production has been developed by BTMA member Shelton Vision, of Leicester, UK.

The patent-pending system has been integrated into the company’s WebSpector platform and validated through factory trials on a purpose-built full scale in-house demonstration system with sophisticated fabric transport capabilities. As a result, a first system has already been ordered by a manufacturer of both plain and patterned fabrics, including camouflage, in Colombia. This follows the successful conclusion of a 21-month Innovate UK project in which techniques for the resolution of complex pattern deformations were developed by machine vision and computer scientists in the company, backed up by the machine vision and robotics department at Loughborough University.

Restrictions
Traditional methods for defect detection rely on human inspection which is ineffective, with detection rates under 65%, while the Shelton WebSpector machine vision system offers a sophisticated platform for automated defect detection of over 97%, but until now has been restricted to plain textiles.

While pattern matching and neural network approaches have previously been tried for patterned textiles, they have failed to provide a practical solution due to the extreme complexity associated with pattern matching on deformable substrates like textiles, as well as the time required to train a neural network for each pattern type.

Challenges
The challenge is that fabrics are not rigid and can be creased or stretched and are also subject to local distortion,” says Shelton Vision Managing Director and CEO Mark Shelton. “As a result, inspection without the technique we have developed, would lead to thousands of false positives. Our sophisticated pattern inspection software techniques ensure a clean image, allowing the detection of faults on fabrics running at speeds of up to a hundred metres a minute.”

The full system consists of:

• A camera and lighting system for optimum image capture at high speed and associated image processing hardware.
• Self-training software utilising statistical analysis to automate the system configuration for new textile products.
• An advanced suite of defect detection algorithms for the detection of all textile defect types.
• An AI-driven defect classification system which learns and automates defect naming in real time, as well as a real time defect grading capability based on client decision rules.
• A system for recording and retrieving complete roll map images for subsequent review and quality control.

The generation of textile roll maps with complete defect data allows for an optimised textile cut plan, improved downstream processing and quality assurance.

Suominen’s energy costs have increased significantly during the recent months and continue to rise during the coming autumn and winter months.

As announced by the company, Suominen can no longer absorb the full extent of these unprecedented increases and hence will implement a new energy surcharge on all its products in Europe.

“Suominen has been preparing for energy shortages and mitigating possible energy interruptions in order to secure business continuity. Naturally this comes with additional cost, but we have decided to remain committed to serve our customers during this difficult period,“ says Markku Koivisto, SVP Europe, Suominen.

Details of the surcharge will be communicated to customers via Suominen sales organization. 

• Aims to tackle the immense textile waste generated in urban environments, on the back of import bans of waste materials
• Addresses the shortcomings of current textile recycling technologies, which are unsuitable for urban settings due to the use of heavy chemicals
• Technologies developed by the newly-formed RGE-NTU Sustainable Textile Research Centre will be test-bedded in RGE’s pilot urban-fit textile recycling plant, projected for completion as early as 2024

Royal Golden Eagle (“RGE”), a global group of resource-based manufacturing companies, which includes a world-leading viscose fibre producers Sateri and Asia Pacific Rayon (APR), is developing urban-fit, closed-loop textile-to-textile recycling solutions, through the newly-formed RGE-NTU Sustainable Textile Research Centre (RGE-NTU SusTex). This is a five-year research collaboration between RGE and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (“NTU”), to accelerate innovation in textile recycling that can be deployed in urban settings. The research centre will develop new technologies to recycle textile waste into fibre and create new, next-generation eco-friendly and sustainable textiles.

This move comes on the back of the tightening of waste import bans in countries such as China, India and Indonesia, which are among the world’s largest waste processors. The stricter import bans have left cities in need of viable local textile recycling solutions to tackle the immense textile waste generated.

RGE Executive Director, Mr Perry Lim, said, “Current textile recycling technologies, which rely primarily on a bleaching and separation process using heavy chemicals, cannot be implemented due to environmental laws. At the same time, there is an urgent need to keep textiles out of the brimming landfills.” He added, “As the world’s largest viscose producer, we aim to catalyse closed-loop, textile-to-textile recycling by developing optimal urban-fit solutions that can bring the world closer to a circular textile economy.”

Globally, an estimated 90 million tonnes of textile waste is generated and disposed of every year, with less than 1% being upcycled into new clothing or other textile materials. By 2030, the amount of global textile waste, which currently accounts for almost 10% of municipal solid waste, is expected to reach more than 134 million tonnes. The textile industry is also responsible for 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions – more than international flights and maritime shipping combined.

At present, most of the available textile recycling technologies are open-loop, where textile waste is typically downcycled to lower-quality products (insulating materials, cleaning cloths, etc.) or be used in waste-to-heat recycling.

“Closed-loop textile-to-textile recycling processes, particularly chemical recycling, are still under development. Scaling up the technologies to industrial scale remains a challenge. A key bottleneck is that refabricating textile waste into fibre needs purity standards for feedstock. However, most of the clothes that we wear are made of a mixture of different synthetic and natural fibres, which makes separating the complex blends of materials challenging for effective recycling.

“Our aim is to address this industry pain point by developing viable solutions that use less energy, fewer chemicals and produces harmless and less effluents, and then potentially scale up across our global operations,” Mr Lim said.

To tackle the key challenges in closed-loop textile recycling, RGE-NTU SusTex is looking into four key research areas, namely cleaner and more energy efficient methods of recycling into new raw materials, automated sorting of textile waste, eco-friendly dye removal, and development of a new class of sustainable textiles that is durable for wear and, at the same time, lends itself to easier recycling.

Technologies developed by RGE-NTU SusTex will be test bedded at RGE’s pilot urban-fit textile recycling plant in Singapore, which is projected for completion as early as 2024. If successful, RGE has plans to replicate the plant in other urban cities within its footprint.

• European Textile Industry calls for immediate action to tackle the energy crisis;

The European textile & fashion in Europe, represented by EURATEX, calls for a single European strategy to tackle this energy crisis. To safeguard the future of the industry, a revision of the electricity price mechanism is necessary and an EU wide cap on gas prices at 80€/MWh. Special company support needs to be granted to avoid bankruptcy and relocation of textile production outside Europe.

Gas and electricity prices have reached unprecedented levels in Europe. Due to severe global competition in the market that characterizes the European textile & clothing industry, these cost increases are impossible to pass on to customers. This has already led to capacity reductions and production stops. Closures and the shift of production outside Europe are being forecasted should the current situation persist, leading to further de-industrialization of our continent and increased dependency on external suppliers.

Specific segments of the textile industry are particularly vulnerable. The man-made fibres (MMF), synthetic and cellulose-based fibres, industry for instance is an energy intensive sector and a major consumer of natural gas in the manufacturing of its fibres. The disappearance of European fibre products would have immediate consequences for the textile industry and for society at large. The activities of textile dyeing and finishing are also relatively intensive in energy. These activities are essential in the textile value chain in order to give the textile products and garments added value through colour and special functionalities (e.g. for medical applications).

The European textile industry calls for an EU-wide cap on gas prices at €80/Mwh, and a revision of the price mechanism for the electricity market, to reduce the huge price gaps with our foreign competitors.

Governments should ensure that critical industries, such textiles and all its segments, are able to ensure gas and electricity contracts towards the end of the year at an affordable price. Stable and predictable energy supply is of the utmost importance. Gas restrictions and rationing must only be used as a last resort. No mandatory consumption cuts should be foreseen.

In addition to these measures under discussion, currently a proliferation of contradictory, uncoordinated national initiatives to tackle the energy crisis is observed. This has led to a de facto fragmentation of the Single Market, resulting in a chaotic policy and regulatory environment that adds a further strain on our supply chain, which is fully integrated at European level. Measures that guarantee a level playing field in the EU are utmost important.

EURATEX President Alberto Paccanelli explained: “Given the current situation, a scenario where entire segments of the textiles industry will disappear can no longer be excluded. This would lead to the loss of thousands of companies and tens of thousands of European jobs and would further aggravate the dependency of Europe to foreign sources of essential goods. This applies specifically to SMEs who need temporary support measures (e.g. state aids, tax relieves, energy price cap) to survive the current crisis and to prepare for the green transition in the longer run.”

The second annual Ryan Young Climate+ Awards will take place this November 2022 at the annual Textile Exchange conference. Nominations are open until August 31, 2022.

The late Ryan Young, Textile Exchange COO from 2017-2020, is the inspiration behind Textile Exchange’s Climate+ Strategy, which is for the organization to serve as “a driving force for urgent climate action,” with a goal of 45% reduced CO2 emissions from textile fiber and material production by 2030. Ryan’s bold and courageous spirit defined what Textile Exchange and its members must do to tackle the climate crisis.

In honor of Ryan and his vision, TE will again be awarding Ryan Young Climate+ Awards to outstanding individuals and teams who show a clear commitment to the Climate+ vision along with other leadership traits.

Winners will be announced at the 2022 Textile Exchange Conference which will take place virtually and in person in Colorado Springs, U.S. from November 14-18, 2022.

The 2022 award categories and criteriaare listed below:
Nominees may be brands, retailers, farmers and/or ranchers, and raw material suppliers.
Winners will receive one free full-access pass to attend the Conference (travel not included).

Three Ryan Young Climate+ Award Categories:

1. Overall leadership – individual
2. Overall leadership – team
3. Rising star – individual with less than 5 years of industry experience

Award recipients will meet the following criteria:

• Commitment to Climate+ – involved in accelerating Climate+ action in the apparel, textile, and footwear industry.
• Collaboration – reflective of Ryan’s vision and determination to collaboratively move the industry forward.
• Impact – driving innovative, scalable, transparent programs with measurable impact reduction and/or beneficial impacts on climate, water, soil health, and/or biodiversity at the raw materials level. Achievements/solutions are backed by trusted data and/or reporting.
• Leadership and Inspiration – clearly demonstrating leadership and vision for industry climate solutions over the past year and beyond