From the Sector

Kelheim Fibres and SUMO are presenting their high-performance absorbent pads for the reusable Sumo diaper at this year's Cellulose Fibres Conference. The Sumo diaper is a sustainable and washable cloth diaper made entirely from biobased materials, offering high performance and innovative design.

The Sumo diaper offers a reusable alternative, consisting of a waterproof shell and absorbent pads. To enhance the performance of the pads, Sumo collaborated with Kelheim Fibres, a leading viscose specialty fibre manufacturer with decades of experience in the hygiene sector.

Together with the Saxon Textile Research Institute STFI, Sumo and Kelheim Fibres have developed a high-performance absorbent pad that is free of fossil-based materials and has already been awarded the Techtextil Innovation Award. The basis for the innovative construction are Kelheim's functionalized specialty viscose fibres with modified cross-sections, which ensure particularly high absorbency and extremely low rewet values.

To ensure the washability of the product, needle-punched/thermally bonded nonwovens were chosen, consisting of a mixture of specialty viscose and PLA bicomponent fibres. By combining nonwovens, typically used in single-use applications, with reusable products, the partners have chosen a new approach.

Natalie Wunder, project manager at Kelheim Fibres, and Luisa Kahlfeldt, founder and designer of SUMO, explain in their joint presentation at the Cellulose Fibre Conference how open innovation has led to successful development collaboration, how this response to current consumer needs has emerged, and what steps are planned for the future.

• Iconic 200 Series fleece to be the first fabric made from this new process.

Polartec®, a Milliken & Company brand, announces Polartec® Shed Less Fleece, a new milestone in its industry-leading efforts to reduce textile fiber fragment shedding. Shed Less is a process that combines yarn construction, knitting, chemistry, and manufacturing to reduce home laundry fiber fragment shedding by an average of 85%. The first fabric to receive this new technology is the brand’s iconic Polartec® 200 Series Fleece, the modern version of the original PolarFleece® launched in 1981, and in 1993, the first performance fleece knit from yarn made from recycled plastic bottles.

The Shed Less process works by engineering the lofted fibers that give fleece its soft hand the ability to resist breaking and rubbing off during home laundering, cited as one contributing factor to the spread of fibers fragments (commonly referred to as microfibers). Polartec® Shed Less Fleece achieves this while maintaining all of the attributes that continue to make Polartec fleece a staple of midlayer collections - lightweight, breathable and warm.

The brand used the AATCC (American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists) TM212-2021 test method for fiber fragment release during home laundering. This test was conducted with large sample sizes to account for variability. The testing concluded that Shed Less Fleece reduced fiber fragment shedding by an average of 85% compared to the baseline fabric.

“In 2016 we began looking into how we might test for fiber loss because there wasn’t a lot of research on the issue.” said Aimee LaValley, Polartec Textile Development, Dye and Chemistry Manager. “This led to new products like Polartec Power Air™, new manufacturing processes, as well as our participation in the TextileMission workgroup to study the issue on an interdisciplinary basis.”

TextileMission was a three year collaborative initiative of academia and industry to reduce the impact of textile microplastics funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Founding partners include The Association of the German Sporting Goods Industry, Hochschule Niederrhein - University of Applied Science; TU Dresden - Institute of Water Chemistry; Vaude Sport; WWF Germany; Adidas AG; Henkel AG; Miele & CIE; and Polartec, LLC.

Polartec® Shed Less Fleece will be initially launched in the United States and will be available to customers beginning March 1, 2023. The brand plans to apply the Shed Less process to many other industry-leading fabric platforms and manufacturing facilities around the world.

• Revenues: 521.9 million euros (+35%)
• EBITDA before non-recurring items: 98.4 million euros (+51%)
• Net income: 43.8 million euros (+55%)
• Free cash flow before non-recurring items: 43.7 million euros
• Dividend*: €0.48 per share (+33%)

Lectra’s Board of Directors, chaired by Daniel Harari, reviewed the consolidated financial statements for the fiscal year 2022. Audit procedures have been performed by the Statutory Auditors. The certification report will be issued at the end of the Board of Director’s meeting of February 23, 2023.

To facilitate the analysis of the Group’s results, the financial statements are compared to those published in 2021 and to the 2021 pro forma financial statement (“2021 Pro forma”), prepared by integrating the three acquisitions made in 2021 – Gerber Technology (“Gerber”), Neteven, and Gemini CAD Systems (“Gemini”) – as if they had been consolidated from January 1, 2021, whereas they have been consolidated since June 1, July 28 and September 27, 2021 respectively.

See attached document for full report.

The Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), an independent and impact-creating organization that brings together around half of the apparel industry to enable positive social and environmental impact at scale, announces its strategic partnership with the Bangladesh Apparel Exchange (BAE) for its fourth edition of the Sustainable Apparel Forum. The event aims to bring together stakeholders to discuss and exchange ideas on how to advance sustainability within the textile and apparel industry.

Taking place on March 15 and 16, 2023, this year’s Sustainable Apparel Forum will focus on five key subject areas of the apparel and textile supply chain: circular economy, climate impact & action, renewable energy & green funding, skill development and green job prospects & challenges. Delegates in attendance will include, garment manufacturers, brands and retailers, development partners, foreign missions and embassies in Bangladesh, impact creating organizations, apparel and textile associations, industry leaders, government officials, secretariats and ministers.

The first day of the forum will be geared towards roundtable discussions and workshop sessions on circularity, while day two, the main conference day of the event, will feature panel discussions, presentations & keynote speeches along with strategic guidelines from government officials and industry leaders.

Vidhura Rapanawe, Board Director, Andrew Martin, VP, Membership and Stakeholder Engagement, and Joyce Tsoi, Director of Collective Action Programs, along with other team members, will represent the SAC, including participation in a discussion on decarbonization and what it will take for the industry to achieve the necessary reduction of carbon emissions. The SAC will also actively participate and organize a special workshop for manufacturers as part of their continued stakeholder engagement efforts.

Carbios has strengthened its leadership team with the appointment of Martine Brisset as Senior Vice President from 1 January 2023. Martine will manage the Biodegradation Division and supervise the Human Resources, Legal, Regulatory, Project Management, Quality Health and Safety departments. Martine Brisset joins the Group’s Executive Committee, as does Delphine Denoizé, who remains Innovation Programs Funding, Regulation and LCA Director with an expanding team.

Martine Brisset has over 30 years of General Management experience in international groups within the plastic and paper packaging industry, most notably at Amcor, Huhtamaki, Linpac and Klockner Pentaplast.  Since 2021, she has held the position of General Manager of Carbiolice in order to integrate this high-potential subsidiary dedicated to biodegradation within the Carbios Group. In her new position as Senior Vice President of Carbios, her main mission will be to successfully deploy the biodegradation technology, facilitate the international expansion of Carbios’ activities, organise the recruitment and training of the Group’s employees. With numerous recruitments planned throughout the company in 2023, building Carbios’ attractivity will be a strategic topic.

After several years working in innovation within the agricultural industry, Delphine Denoizé joined the Carbios in 2016 and was one of its first twenty employees. Initially in charge of Innovation Funding and Regulation, then Project Management for PET biorecycling, she now oversees all the Group’s projects. Her responsibilities include French and European public funding for innovation, regulatory compliance of processes and products around the world, and assessment of their environmental impact through specific tools such as Life Cycle Assessment.

Art meets sustainable fashion in the third edition of the project "CirculART", the initiative that sees companies, artists and fashion designers working together with Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto, showing how new balanced forms of production, design and sharing can be explored through a careful choice of materials and of sustainable supply chains. Three key concepts underpin the circularity of sustainable fashion and therefore this project: Reduce - reducing the consumption of raw materials, Reuse - reuse of raw materials, Recycling - regeneration.

The project CirculART is conceived and developed in collaboration between Fashion B.E.S.T. and UNIDEE Residency Programs, and led by the Foundation's team of curators.

Fashion B.E.S.T. - Better Ethical Sustainable Think-Tank, Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto’ sustainable fashion office, was created by artist Michelangelo Pistoletto and Franca Sozzani. Since 2009, B.E.S.T. has been working on the development of sustainability in the textile sector, to lead to a contamination between art, which assumes social responsibility, and the world of fashion, which is looking to define a new ethical and sustainable model.

CirculART proposes a new link between fashion and art, engaging both in a conscious and innovative combination of sustainability, sensitivity, beauty and union. The project links territory and production factories, bringing together actors from the different sectors making up the textile supply chain that work on the basis of a circular economy with companies that have chosen to embrace the ideal of sustainability and develop an innovative business model.

The protagonists of this year’s edition are two international artists and two international fashion designers, selected through an open call launched by Cittadellarte: Augustina Bottoni, Lucia Chain, Huge Sillytoe and Rebecca Sforzani, young talents called upon to create a work with fabrics produced by partner companies, focusing on dialogue and on the enhancement of the textile industry production chain.

In early 2023, the programme will give the four selected artists the opportunity to visit and work actively with the partner companies that have joined the initiative.
These are: Achille Pinto S.p.a, manufacturer of textiles and textile accessories for the main international fashion brands; Albini Group, Europe's largest manufacturer of cotton fabrics for shirts; Erica Industria Tessile, a leading company in the creation of textile prints, original and customised designs; Filatura Astro, eco-sustainable regenerated yarns; G2B S.r.l., a chemical and environmental analysis laboratory working with vertical cultivation from which indigo is obtained; Lampo by Ditta Giovanni Lanfranchi S.p.A., leader in the creation and production of zips for fashion; Lanificio Fratelli Cerruti, a Biella-based weaver for haute couture; Lenzing, world leader in the production of fabrics made from fibres derived from renewable wood raw material; Milior, a producer of high quality fabrics; Officina +39 – Chemistry plus creativity, a chemical company with thirty years' experience dedicated to research and chemical application in textiles; Tessuti di Sondrio, a factory inspired by the century-old local textile tradition of processing cotton, linen, hemp and wool; Tintoria Emiliana, garment-dyed production and sustainable practices; Zegna Baruffa Lane Borgosesia, a manufacturer of 100% Made in Italy fine combed and carded yarns.

Fibre Extrusion Technology Limited (FET) of Leeds, England, a supplier of laboratory and pilot melt spinning systems, is celebrating a record breaking year of sales and product innovation. “Sales revenue for 2022 has easily beaten our previous high” said FET Managing Director, Richard Slack “and the research projects we have collaborated in have become increasingly challenging in terms of technical specification.”

Prestigious new projects during 2022 included a multifilament melt spinning line for Senbis Polymer Innovations, Netherlands enabling the development of textile fibres from recycled polymers or biopolymers; a FET-200LAB wet spinning system at the University of Manchester which will play a major part in advanced materials research in collaboration with the renowned Henry Royce Institute; and a FET-103 Monofilament line for RHEON LABS of London to help develop a hyper viscoelastic fibre from RHEON™ which displays high strain-rate sensitive properties. The latter two of these examples were aided by significant UK grants to develop advanced materials.

FET is now looking forward to 2023 with a record order book. The company’s newly opened Fibre Development Centre features over £1.5 million investment in customer laboratory systems that will further enable fibre trials and product R&D. Three new polymer types were developed with clients in 2022 and several more are lined up in 2023, which is expected to bring the total of different polymer types to more than 40 in multifilament, monofilament and nonwoven formats.

FET will be exhibiting at two major exhibitions in 2023; INDEX 23, a leading Nonwovens show at Geneva in April; and ITMA, Milan, an international textile and garment technology exhibition in June.

The international fashion sourcing platform Source Fashion, taking place from 12th – 14th February at Olympia London, has announced a compelling line-up of country pavilions and over 150 audited, quality manufacturers from around the world including Peru, India, China, Pakistan, Italy, Spain, Greece, North Macedonia,  the UAE, Madagascar, Jordan, Uzbekistan, Turkey, the UK and many more who will join the inaugural show, which runs parallel to Pure London.

Bringing a textile pavilion to the UK for the first time, the Peru Pavilion will showcase six manufacturers specialising in high-quality alpaca wool from the raw material right through to garment production, as well as cotton and other natural mixtures.

The main Indian Pavilion at this year’s Source Fashion, in collaboration with the Wool and Woollens Export Promotion Council, will showcase 20 established garment and textile exporters specialising in wool, woollen and acrylic fibres. The exhibitors will be showing full garments including men’s, women’s and kidswear as well as a selection of fabrics and raw materials. These exhibitors are regular export partners to the UK retail industry and already work with some big retailers in white label production.

The China Pavilion will present a selection of high-quality Chinese manufacturers ranging from full garment manufacturing through to raw materials, fabrics, cashmere and components.

Other producers and manufacturers attending Source Fashion from across Europe and the UK include:

• Mivania - an Italian knitwear manufacturer producing garments in 100% cashmere and cashmere blends.
• SATCoL (Salvation Army Trading Company) - a charity-owned textiles collector in the UK, actively working with retailers to reduce their carbon footprints.
• Kusilas - a Spanish company monitoring all the stages of the production process.
• Prime Casual - based in Leicester, UK, they specialise in the design and manufacture of ladies clothing from fast fashion, wholesale to bespoke tailoring.
• Athos Pallas - a fashion and textile agency located in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Yalin Xu has been appointed Managing Director and President of DyStar Group by the Board of Directors. He will be directly responsible for the management and operations of DyStar Group. Mr Xu first joined DyStar in 2010 and has since been the Executive Board Director.
 
Eric Hopmann has been redesignated as CCO (Chief Commercial Officer), with a focus on Sales and Marketing of DyStar Group. He will continue to report to Yalin Xu. Mr Hopmann was with DyStar when the company started in 1995 and has been leading various leadership positions at DyStar Group, including the most recent CEO role, to which he was appointed in 2014.
 
DyStar’s leadership change is in response to the rapid global market changes, and to enable the group to accelerate growth and drive productivity. The group wants to streamline their operations and better utilise resources efficiently across the network.

Over the past three years, a dedicated AI development team at BTMA member Shelton Vision has been developing tailored machine learning solutions for the textiles industry.

The aim has been to elevate the detection process and the accuracy of naming and grading subtle defects in textiles, in real time within production environments.

“Big Data ‘off-the-shelf’ systems such as those behind technolgies like facial recognition and Google Maps involve reading many thousands of single images each second and simply take too long to accumulate sufficient data for what’s required in this specific case,” says Shelton Vision CEO and Managing Director Mark Shelton. “A feature of the textile industry is that in many sectors, the product range changes several times within a year and it is not uncommon to have to inspect hundreds, if not thousands of different styles in a year based on precise settings.”

In terms of defect types, he adds, there may typically be over 100 that need to be accurately detected, classified (named) and graded in real time.

“Added to this is the need to ‘filter out’ the random occurrence of ‘non defects’, such as loose threads, lint and dust on the surface – the number of which can be higher than actual defects – and it is clear that a bespoke system is required.”
The development team has consequently established metadata for identifying defect properties, enabling the successful identification of faults from a much smaller number of images.

“The system employs a unique combination of machine learning for automated style training and novel algorithms for defect detection, to provide high quality images for the AI real time defect classification and grading software,” Shelton explains. “Due to the inherent variation in fabric features – raw materials, construction, texture, colour and finishes, as well as the differing product quality standards in value chains and the regional variations in what defects are called – our AI engine uses models built for each individual company or group of companies, or product value chain.”

The AI models are constructed so that the user operatives can populate them with their own data produced by the vision system or by obtaining defect images from another imaging source (eg a mobile phone camera).  

The occurrence of defects is sporadic and many defect types occur infrequently, although when they do, they can have severe consequences. These scenarios re-enforce the need for the AI engine to be quickly set up and able to operate accurately with limited data sets of typically between 30 and 50 good quality images per defect type.

A further feature is a tool enabling the user to periodically ‘clean up’ the AI data during the set up phase. This is used to resolve conflicting data and to correct mis-named images.

Generally, the highest cost component of fabric production is the raw material and in addition to finished product inspection, a cost effective use for vision systems is in process operation.

Generally, the highest cost component of fabric production is the raw material and in addition to finished product inspection, a cost effective use for vision systems is in process operation.

“There is a need for the real time detection of defects that are being created in separate processes, such as printing or coating and for real time automated systems that can accurately determine the defects and their severity and provide a reliable signal for an operative to rectify the issue, This can result in considerable savings.

Prior to Shelton introducing powerful customised machine vision and real time defect classification, the only systems available were those that required manual sifting through vast numbers of images, which included both real defects and ‘non defect’ images. The task was very often overwhelming and did not provide much benefit beyond manual fabric inspection.