From the Sector

Albini Group, historic manufacturer of high-end shirting fabrics, meets C.L.A.S.S. Eco Hub, international platform for the promotion and development of innovative and sustainable textiles. Two groundbreaking companies joining forces in the name of ethical and technological development through the C.L.A.S.S. Material Hub, the section dedicated to fibers, threads, yarns and fabrics that are changing the fashion and textile industry.  The values in which Albini Group believes and the strong sensitivity to environmental issues have led the company to also address the issue of the risk of toxic and harmful chemicals in a systemic way, integrating into the production cycles activities and controls aimed at gradually eliminating their presence, with the clear objective of protecting man and the environment.

Three main research areas - innovative fibers and yarns, sustainable dyes and green chemistry - united by the task of transferring cutting-edge technologies through open innovation. Among the new projects presented is "Off the Grain," born from the collaboration with Riso Gallo, a leading rice producer in Italy. It is a new type of dye derived from the processing of a particular variety of black rice: the boiling water of the rice, which can no longer be used for the food industry, is transformed into a natural dye, resulting in significant water savings during the dyeing process.

"Grounded Indigo" is a natural textile dyestuff, born from the search for dyeing practices that are more responsible to people and the environment. For this project, ALBINI_next chose to collaborate with Stony Creek Colors, an American producer of the world's only 100% plant-based indigo that is USDA BioPreferred certified.

The third project, called "HempFeel," is an innovative hemp oil-based finishing, tipically used for cosmetic products. ALBINI_next was the first company to apply it to fabrics of different weights, compositions and structures. HempFeel replaces silicones usually used in finishing, thus reducing the release of microplastics and giving fabrics a soft and durable hand.

"When discussing values related to creativity, next-generation production and commitment to ethics and traceability, Albini is an extremely important point of reference." says Giusy Bettoni, founder and CEO of C.L.A.S.S. "This is why we are delighted with its inclusion within our Material Hub, alongside its colleagues of the responsible innovation movement. Follow us on this new common path. Next- generation solutions and nice surprises will not be missed."

The Italian company presented its newest innovations and synergies, among the introduction of SMART O3, a new Ozone Booster improving the bleaching on indigo, and the educational experience Circular Explorations: Recipe for Change, in collaboration with Adriana Galijasevic’s Cocircular Lab at Denim Première Vision.

The Trustainable™ collection FW 23 presents the SMART 03
For Officina39, “Trustainable” is a term that expresses the company’s approach based on honesty, transparency and social responsibility: this attitude once again characterizes the technologies that have given shape to the Trustainable™ collection FW 23.

The latest technological addition to the line is represented by the new Ozone Booster SMART 03,
which assures more final bluish indigo shades, activating the reaction of Ozone on indigo without any strong oxidizing agent. Better results, less aggressive bleaching.

Less water, plus sustainability, empowered result
The new collection also marks the debut of Aqualess Fade, a technology that recreates the bleaching effect of chlorine on fabrics, a waterless special compound for the discoloration of denim on indigo/black garments which reduces resource consumption and environmental impact. This newest innovation completes and integrates Aqualess Mission, a combination of technologies that allows garment laundry processes to reduce 75% of the water use.

Officina39 and Adriana Galijasevic join forces
Circular Explorations: Recipe for Change is the collaborative and educational project developed by Officina39 and Adriana Galijasevic’s Cocircular Lab, showcasing the use of waste as a resource and prolonging the life of the garment through color. Several brands (C.P. Company, Tommy for Life/PVH Corp., Organic Basics, Asics, Lenzing and Camo) donated overstock garments as well as second-grade production or damaged, unsold pieces to be updated with newly developed applications made with Officina39’s Recycrom™, patented dyestuffs range made from textile waste.

For the first time at an in-person event, WOX by Wiser Tech hits Denim Première Vision, with its futuristic design and features leveraging Wiser Wash’s innovative potential. WOX machinery generation combines advanced hardware technology and software algorithms working on the cloud, laying new innovative foundations for fashion all over the world.

Making the finishing technologies fully traceable and accessible thanks to the advanced application of Wiser Tech Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the cloud system, WOX is one of the first of these technologies promising to redefine the entire market. Standing for Wiser Ozone X-perience, WOX physically consists of an ozone drum and generator – but, in its spirit, it was designed as a network object that provides data to Artificial Intelligence algorithms. With this feature it is really one-of-a kind in the industry, thanks to Artificial Intelligence’s potential to transform the existing business models and redefine the production process by developing new practices based on data analytics.

The goal? To provide textile manufacturers with total control over their production, with credible sustainable solutions to address the most pressing environmental issues of the industry.

ISKO’s partnership with PAOLO GNUTTI, featuring exclusive creations for the luxury segment, landed at Denim Première Vision in Berlin. Merging sustainable and innovative fashion with new premium aesthetics.

The collection, launched for the first time at Denim Première Vision, embodies ISKO’s most revolutionary technological innovations combined with the long-standing expertise of Paolo Gnutti, who explored aesthetics highly profiled to the unique needs of the luxury segment through 7 main moods:

1. Denim addicted, celebrating total denim looks, offering classic silhouettes mixed up with revised volumes and details;
2. Y2k, bringing back the 2000s typical style featuring exposed skin, low waist pants, micro tops, mini skirts, shrunken garments, butterfly decorations and embellishments;
3. Fanaticism, featuring bright, bold colors, intricate prints and logos combined with details that meet ample volume styles;
4. Bounder glam, all about glammed up leather effects inspired by bikers' unapologetic style and applied to oversize fits, cutouts and lace-ups styles;
5. Moto’roll, where the iconic 60s and 70s biker style is back with a modern twist and a vast range of treatments and fabrics, offering men and women true crowd-pleasers;
6. Gingham mania, an in-depth exploration of the gingham trend which finds expression through various dimensions and techniques that cater to any silhouette;
7. Rugged re-made, which celebrates workwear and historical garments creating a style that combines history with technologies, solutions and treatments to recreate that vintage look dear to the heart of lovers of denim heritage.

• Freudenberg presents liquid absorbers for lithium-ion battery packs

The experts from Freudenberg Performance Materials (Freudenberg) will be presenting battery pack liquid absorbers, an innovative solution that makes battery systems safer, at this year's Battery Show in Stuttgart. The absorbent pads capture and store unwanted liquids inside the packs quickly and reliably. With adjustable absorption capacity and geometries, battery pack liquid absorbers ensure long-lasting battery packs. Visitors will find Freudenberg at Stand C 36 in Hall 10 from June 28 to 30.

Battery packs are the core elements of mobile and stationary lithium-ion energy storage systems. They are used in automotive and industrial applications. The performance and lifespan of these components are largely responsible for the efficiency of the energy storage system. Moisture inside the packs, such as condensation water or leaking coolant, can considerably diminish both function and lifespan. Battery pack liquid absorbers act as a safety system: the special fleece quickly takes up condensate or coolant and stores it effectively.

The opening of this facility marks the expansion of ISKO’s Creative Room Services (CRS) division and its dedication to the continuation of responsible production.

ISKO has opened its first product development centre, based in London. Creative Room London is a unique and innovative space and the first of its kind in the UK. It is the latest initiative of Creative Room Services (CRS), a division of ISKO devoted to offering streamlined and simplified solutions for all denim requirements – from fabric to finished garment.

With a focus on sustainable washing and finishing techniques, customers at Creative Room London will be able to work in parallel with experts to achieve their desired denim looks. Together with machine technology partner Jeanologia, they have been able to develop innovative washing and finishing techniques that meet the highest quality and sustainability standards with a significantly lower environmental impact.

The Creative Room London will also be the central point for their customer’s full product development, ensuring the whole process is agile and more efficient. As well as a hub for its customers, Creative Room London will also act as a platform of education and support for the wider denim community, working with local talent and universities to share knowledge and to bring ideas and concepts to life.

Huntsman Textile Effects has introduced NOVACRON® Atlantic EC-NC, one of the the industry’s first blue elements that delivers chlorine- and nitrogen oxide (NOx)-fastness alongside lightfastness for textiles, ensuring garments to look as good as new for longer.

The NOVACRON® Atlantic EC-NC blue element completes Huntsman Textile Effects’ Non-Contrasting Concept and addresses the challenges faced by mills to deliver:

• Improved light-, perspiration- and chlorine-fastness
  Ideal for the production of light-medium shades of towels and bedding and T-shirts, shirts and trousers, the dye meets the most stringent home laundering program requirements of US and Japanese brands, and also performs well in other markets where chlorine is added to water supplies.
• High NOx resistance
  NOx present in the air makes textile products more susceptible to fading during transportation, storage and retail display. The high NOx resistance of NOVACRON® Atlantic EC-NC enables mills and brands to achieve positive differentiation with textiles that are less likely to fade.
• Operational excellence
  With unique application properties for both exhaust and pad processes, and outstanding compatibility with all other trichromatic dyes, NOVACRON® Atlantic EC-NC is a breakthrough in right first-time production.

The innovative IP-protected NOVACRON® Atlantic EC-NC dye is also a great addition to the successful NOVACRON® NC concept for earth tone colors. The earth tones – from sand to brown, olive, beige, khaki and grey – are popular in casual wear and sports apparel, as well as for home and hospitality textile products such as furnishing, towels and bedding.

Baldwin Technology Company Inc., an innovator of advanced color-management solutions and inspection technology for the printing industry, will present its “Complete Solution” for printing and inspection at the Tax Stamp and Traceability Forum, held May 16 to 18 in Malta.

Baldwin’s Complete Solution can be any combination of feeders (roll or sheet), vacuum tables, inspection systems, inkjet printers, UV ink-curing systems, reject gates and bins, sheet stackers, and real-time monitoring and reporting tools. Alongside Baldwin’s technologies, optional solution components can be joined together through partnerships with suppliers to create a world-class solution.

For advanced defect detection, Baldwin’s Guardian PQV 100% Print Inspection camera systems can be mounted on one or both sides of the product to perform 100% print-quality inspection, verify variable data and inspect the most challenging security print features. The system offers lighting options for all materials and substrates, as well as for special applications, including holograms, covert serialization, covert security features and more. The Guardian PQV can also be retrofitted to existing presses, machines and transports.
 
As part of a data-connected defect-management workflow, the Guardian PQV is a feature-rich inline defect-detection system that enables printers to find and remove defects quickly—and monitor their processes to prevent defects from occurring again or repeatedly. This technology provides complete print-quality verification from prepress through production, reporting and archiving for perfect runs.

Baldwin recently realigned its sales teams to optimize service and simplify access to its process-improvement and consumables technologies for printing and packaging customers in more than 100 countries. Two new sales professionals have since joined the team, covering smaller regional geographies and providing customers with a single point of contact for all of Baldwin’s product lines.

Following their merger, Freudenberg Performance Materials, Low & Bonar, Mehler Texnologies® and Filc will be presenting their innovative solutions at a joint stand for the first time at this year’s techtextil exhibition in Frankfurt. The focus is on sustainability. Among the highlights are Evolon® RE, a microfilament textile for a wide variety of applications and markets, FILFLEX, a sustainable padding material for car seat covers, and the truck tarpaulin POLYMAR® 8556 ECO CF. Customers will find the world's leading manufacturer of technical textiles at Stand C51 in Hall 12.1.

Evolon® textiles made from recycled PET
With Evolon® RE, Freudenberg Performance Materials is presenting an even more sustainable version of its high-performance microfilament textiles. Evolon® RE is manufactured from an average of 70% recycled polyester, which the company makes by cycling post-consumer PET bottles in-house. Evolon® RE products are available for various applications such as technical packaging, in weights currently ranging from 80g/sqm to 300g/sqm. For high-tech wiping, lightweight Evolon® RE is now available starting from 30g/sqm. The material meets the needs of cleaning specialists for more sustainable wiping solutions. Evolon® RE offers the same high quality and material performance as all other Evolon® textiles.

Tarpaulins made from recycled raw materials presented by Mehler Texnologies®
When it comes to tarpaulins on trucks, both protection of the transport cargo and advertising for the transport company place high demands on the material. Mehler Texnologies® tarpaulin material ranks among the premium products for truck tarpaulins. The company is a pioneer in sustainable development and is showcasing POLYMAR® 8556 ECO CF. This unique material has a 25% share of recycled raw materials in the coating mass. In addition, the material is made with 100% R-PES yarns. The input materials undergo a complex separation and filtering process.

Sustainable padding material for automotive and furniture seat covers presented by FILC
FILFLEX is a soft and flexible padding layer made from nonwovens for automotive and furniture seat covers. It prevents leather from creasing and improves the dimensional stability of the seat covers. In terms of sustainability, its benefit is its 100% PET composition, making FILFLEX easy to recycle. FILFLEX offers customers easier handling during sewing and the seat covering process. End users benefit from the high seating comfort.

• with a ready-to-use swatch book dedicated to its DEEP DIVE sustainable dyeing system for dark, popular color basics

Archroma, a global leader in specialty chemicals towards sustainable solutions, launches its first ever ready-to-use swatch book, dedicated to creating sustainable black and dark color basics for faster time to market, to support its popular DEEP DIVE 2.0 system.

In 2018, Archroma launched its system solutions, a holistic approach aimed at addressing the growing expectations of the public in terms of keeping consumers, and the environment, safe.
Under the umbrella of "The Archroma Way to a Sustainable World: Safe, efficient, enhanced, it's our nature", the Archroma systems are designed to create innovation and performance, whilst reducing the impacts on water, energy and other natural resources. The savings generated by these 70+ system solutions are demonstrated by Archroma's proprietary ONE WAY Impact Calculator, a ground-breaking tool launched in 2012 and continuously upgraded to simulate and optimize the footprint of textile application processes.

One of these systems, DEEP DIVE 2.0, has attracted a lot of interest not just from textile manufacturers but also from major brands and retailers worldwide. This popular system combines Drimaren® Ultimate HD, high-performance reactive dyes, with Blue Magic, an all-in-one pretreatment, Optifix® RUB New liq and Siligen® SIH-S New liq, a finishing treatment improved rub fastness and elegant hand feel, and an effective hydrolyzed dye remover, Cyclanon® XC-W New liq. The result is a shorter dyeing process combining right-first-time productivity, an improved fabric quality for longer lasting end-articles, as well as dramatically reduced water and energy utilization for brands committed to drive more sustainable production. Savings can reach up to 31% water and 34% energy.

The system is ideally suited for medium and dark cottons that have high performing fastness to light, multiple home laundering, saliva – in other words: apparel used for fashion, sports and baby’s wear.
At the same time, interested manufacturers and brands were facing the constant challenge of the fashion industry: time to market.

Often design is separated from execution in the factory and as such often designers initially select color that cannot be met in reality on different fibers or production routes in terms of color flare, metamerism, brightness, depth and now sustainable metrics – leading to lengthy delays and compromises in function, performance and/or color.
Archroma decided to create a dedicated tool aimed at addressing these issues. The company developed a new, unique book with color swatches made with the system that is ready to implement immediately into production thanks to engineered color standards and specifications.

This new tool offers a path to bridge the gap between “art and science” by providing at inspiration phase fully executable deep colors for cotton with controlled color metamerism and at the same time demonstrate water, energy and chemical savings, enhanced color fastness using safe chemistry for the end consumer. As a wardrobe staple, medium to dark shades are very popular with consumers. As a result, most brands and retailers often have and sell up to 60% of medium to dark shades in their seasonal palettes. It’s also the dark shades that use the most water and energy in production, so prioritizing these colors would have the largest ecological positive impact. The 48 colors swatched in the DEEP DIVE 2.0 book have been selected based on market popularity to allow brands and manufacturers to match that very stable market demand. Customers may use these colors as presented, or as inspiration whereby Archroma can create and match new custom colors using the DEEP DIVE 2.0 system.

Christophe Maestripieri, Global Head of the Archroma Brand Studio, the company’s department dedicated to support brands’ projects and innovations, explains: “We wanted to make sure our partners have all the tools they need to convert to more sustainable colors. We had the ideal dyeing system to do that, DEEP DIVE 2.0, with its high performance and reduced impacts on resources. Now, with the new DEEP DIVE 2.0 swatch book, we also offer to brands and manufacturers a way to select sustainable color options that meet the market demand for high quality medium to dark shades which can be implemented into production right away.”