From the Sector

Freudenberg Performance Materials (Freudenberg) will present surfacing veils and core materials for lightweight fiber reinforced plastic (FRP) parts at JEC in Paris, France. Freudenberg will also be showcasing Enka® Solutions flow media and spacers for efficient vacuum infusion, resin transfer and foam injection molding processes for applications in the composites industry, etc. at the international composites show.
 
Freudenberg’s solutions for the FRP industry include a variety of glass, PAN and PET nonwovens, as well as core materials for the production of lightweight fiber reinforced plastic parts. These products are designed for anti-corrosion coatings in piping and tank construction, smooth UV resistant surfaces for facade panels, and other applications for a diverse range of end products. Products made from fiber reinforced plastics must be equipped with surfacing veils to provide abrasion resistance, corrosion resistance, smooth surfaces and mechanical strength. Freudenberg offers high-tech nonwovens that can meet these challenges.
 
Enka® Solutions products are characterized by their typical 3D entangled polymeric filament structures. Thanks to this structure, they are exceptionally suitable as flow media and spacers when producing composite materials.

Kornit Digital LTD. (NASDAQ: KRNT) ("Kornit" or the "Company"), a market leader in sustainable, on-demand digital fashion and textile production technologies, announced its partnership with VORN – The Berlin Fashion Hub, Zalando, and Unity – creating an "alliance of the willing" to transform the industry via "phygital" fashion with a circular approach.

Nine designers were challenged to create fashion capsules in eight weeks utilizing the latest technology innovations from the three alliance partners – combining digital product creation, web3-based design, digital printing, immersive circular design, 3D rendering and avatar development. All collections are on display exclusively at Berlin Fashion Week from Wednesday, January 18 to Friday, January 20 at Bikini Berlin.
 
The challenge follows standing room only Kornit Fashion Week events across the globe, displaying how on-demand, digital production creates a fashion world of nearly endless creativity. Hosted at the Impact Hub Berlin, the VORN Academy Program offered creators access to a holistic technology toolset - including the advanced Kornit Presto MAX single-step solution for direct-to-fabric sustainable printing. Some of the prominent designers taking part include costume and fashion designer Alexis Mersmann, Judith Bondy, AR and NFT artist Ann-Britt Dittmar, Berlin-based director Tanja Bombach, Nina Jurcic, Olga Boncheva, digital artist, and fashion designer Schirin Negahbani, Johann Erhardt, and Israeli designer Idan Yoav.
 
"This collaboration across four industry leaders is so unique because the result is a sum so much greater than each of its individual parts. It's a true 'alliance of the willing' that opens doors to 'phygital' collections built at the intersection of digital fashion, 3D design, and on-demand production," said Omer Kulka, Chief Innovation Officer at Kornit Digital. "We're honored to team with VORN – The Berlin Fashion Hub, Zalando, and Unity during Berlin Fashion Week to demonstrate what's possible as the physical and virtual fashion worlds come together."
 
"When we launched the Berlin Fashion Hub, our intent was to create a B2B environment to spark unmatched fashion and sustainability innovations. As Berlin is one of the world's most important fashion and textile centers, there is no better place to demonstrate economically succesful circularity in the fashion industry," said Professor Marte Hentschel, Co-Founder at VORN – The Berlin Fashion Hub. "Together, we're changing fashion to drive sustainability and harness the creative power of both the physical and virtual. We're proud of what's been accomplished in conjunction with an incredible group of designers, creators, and partners."

SHIMA SEIKI ITALIA S.p.A., Italian subsidiary of leading Japanese computerized knitting solutions provider SHIMA SEIKI MFG., LTD., will exhibit at the 92nd edition of the Pitti Immagine Filati exhibition in Florence, Italy. Products exhibited will include the new SWG-XR®154 and N.SVR®183 computerized flat knitting machines as well as APEXFiz® design software.

As pioneer of seam-free WHOLEGARMENT® knitting, SHIMA SEIKI has been setting the standard almost exclusively with nearly 30 years of experience in complete garment technology. Now that benchmark has been raised once again with its new SWG-XR® flagship WHOLEGARMENT® knitting machine. SWG-XR® features 4 needle beds for all-needle knitting of high quality WHOLEGARMENT® products using the company's original SlideNeedle®. SWG-XR® features a renewed sinker system and a compact, light-weight carriage featuring 4 systems as well as auto yarn carriers. All contribute to increased productivity of more than 25% over the previous MACH2®XS machine, as well as increased product range using a wider variety of yarn for supporting knits for all seasons, and higher quality for knitting beautiful fabrics and silhouettes; even items that were impossible to knit with the MACH2® series. SWG-XR® sets new standards for the next generation of waste-free, sustainable WHOLEGARMENT® knitting.

A new proposal in WHOLEGARMENT® knitting will also be introduced in the form of the N.SVR®183 WHOLEGARMENT® knitting machine. SHIMA SEIKI's global standard in shaped knitting, the N.SVR® series now features a model for producing WHOLEGARMENT® knitwear using every other needle in ultrafine gauge. N.SVR®183 is equipped with the R2CARRIAGE® system and a compact, lightweight carriage for even higher productivity. Shown in 21G at Pitti Filati 92, N.SVR®183 is the ideal machine for flexible, entry-level WHOLEGARMENT® production, with the versatility to respond to fluctuating market demand.

APEXFiz® subscription-based design software supports the creative side of fashion from planning and design to colorway evaluation, realistic fabric simulation and 3D virtual sampling. Virtual samples are a digitized version of sample making that are accurate enough to be used effectively as prototypes, replacing physical sampling and consequently reducing time, cost and material that otherwise go to waste. APEXFiz® thereby helps to realize sustainability and digitally transform the fashion supply chain.

In occasion of the next edition of Pitti Uomo, Bemberg™ by Asahi Kasei – the unique fiber with a circular economy footprint obtained from cotton linters through a closed-loop process ensuring certified sustainability credentials through its transparent and traceable approach- reveals a very special Bemberg™ fabrics smart range dedicated to premium denimwear.

This has been made possible thanks to the partnership with PureDenim, a leading Italian company whose strategy since 10 years is based on an entire re-design of the production system, inspired by circular economy principles that combines technology and innovative materials in order to offer the highest levels of design, innovation and real responsible values derived from an holistic approach to sustainability.
The “Blue di Cupro” collection is made with seven fabrics made with Bemberg™, either 100% Bemberg™ or in blend with cotton, wool, and it applies the most advanced Pure Denim Technologies. The Blue di cupro fabrics made with Bemberg™ will also be dyed with “Smart Indigo” an indigo dye technology internally produced by PureDenim, through a chemical-free production. The only elements involved are: water, indigo pigments, and electricity. In terms of finishing, fabrics’ looks and performances are enhanced by the “Eco Sonic” ultrasounds finishing technology which brings significant reduction of water used, increased aesthetic features and controlled discoloration. And last but not least every yarn used at PureDenim is protected by NaturalReco® a 100% natural product that completely SUBSTITUTE the use of plastic films that are one of the key causes of microplastic emission for denim application.

“Blue” seems to be the new colour of Bemberg™, in fact, the company in early November 2022 announced, at the Blue Friday initiative by UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), the achievement of the OK biodegradable MARINE certification, which guarantees the biodegradability of its products even in the marine environment, as certified by TÜV AUSTRIA, meaning a lot in the context of microplastics in water issue solutions. This Bemberg™ certification’s achievement comes on top of other key ones such as the INNOVHUB report that confirms Bemberg™ biodegradability in soil without releasing hazardous substances, the RCS by Textile Exchange, and the Oeko-Tex Standard 100 and ISO 14001 corporate certifications.

• Trevira CS Joint Booth with 16 Partners
• Sustainability Presentation: Path of Sustainability
• Special Exhibition: TEXTILE TALENTS by Trevira CS

The Trevira CS® brand presents itself together with 16 top customers and partners, an exciting special exhibition, and a sustainability presentation at Heimtextil in Frankfurt from 10 to 13 January 2023. The joint booth covers an area of over 1,400 m².

Visitors can find out about innovations in the fields of yarn production, woven and knitted fabrics and interior solar shading. Once again this year, the exhibitors on the Trevira CS stand will cover all textile applications with their flame retardant product for the home textile and contract market, from light curtains to heavy upholstery fabrics.

The following Trevira CS customers and partners will be exhibiting:
Chamatex SAS, F.lli Baroni s.r.l., FIDIVI Tessitura Vergnano S.p.A., Hoftex Färberei GmbH, Ilcat by Lei Tsu s.r.l., Lodetex S.p.A., Lonfil S.r.l., Mattes & Ammann GmbH & Co. KG, Mottura S.p.A., Pozzi Arturo S.p.A., PUGI R.G. S.R.L., Tessitura Mario Ghioldi & C. s.r.l., Tintoria Sala s.r.l., Torcitura Fibre Sintetiche S.p.A., Torcitura Padana S.p.A., Vlnap a.s., Wagenfelder Spinnereien GmbH and Wintex S.r.l.

The presentations on the Trevira CS brand will focus on 2 topics. One revolves around information on sustainability: The Path of Sustainability presentation will give visitors detailed information about the various sustainability aspects of the Trevira CS brand. The information chain will deal with Trevira CS technology, particularly sustainable product variants, the longevity of the textiles, the Trevira CS eco brand for flame retardant fabrics with recycled content, and the take-back program for Trevira CS fabrics. At the end of the chain, a prototype of a new product development will be presented, giving insight into the brand’s future sustainable development opportunities.

Once again, there will also be a special exhibition. The focus here will be on showcasing the special additional functions and properties that Trevira CS fabrics offer in addition to their flame retardancy. Visitors can look forward to a special staging: It’s showtime for the TEXTILE TALENTS by Trevira CS!

For the design of the special exhibition, all Trevira CS customers were invited to submit their latest Trevira CS products, distinguished by additional functions and/or special features, to the annual Trevira CS Fabric Competition. 227 products from 50 customers were submitted, from which about 150 were selected for the special exhibition. Several thousand meters of yarn will also be used in this year's special show.

Monforts will be presenting its finishing technologies at the forthcoming Igatex textile machinery exhibition, which takes place from December 1-4 at the Lahore Expo Centre in Pakistan.

The importance of the textile industry to Pakistan’s economy cannot be overstated – it accounts for 60% of the country’s overall exports and some of its industry’s players are very major employers. In the year to June 2022, Pakistan’s textile exports climbed by 25% to a record value of $19.3 billion according to the country’s Bureau of Statistics, as security of deliveries – especially to Europe and the USA – worked in the country’s favour, in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent supply chain issues. It has a key role to play in quickly getting the country back on its feet after the devastation.

Monforts customers in the regions around the country’s three biggest cities of Karachi, Lahore and Faisalbad include all of the main players in the fields of home textiles and denim production, including Afroze, , Al Karam Artistic Milliners, Azgard-9, Crestex, , Gul Ahmed, Interloop, Liberty Mills, Lucky Textile Mills, Mustaqim, Naveena (NDL), Rajby Industries, Sapphire Finishing, Soorty, Style Textile and US Denim.

These companies rely on established Monforts technologies including Montex stentering equipment, Monfortex sanforizing units and Thermex dyeing ranges. The company’s Matex Eco Applicator minimum application system has also proved a big hit in recent years.

Monforts has also achieved considerable success in Pakistan with its Econtrol®* dyeing system  – an effective and established dyeing process. More than 40 Thermex continuous dyeing ranges have been installed in Pakistan in recent years and operator training on the Econtrol®* process by sophisticated technologists is an additional service.

The Econtrol® pad-dry process has a number of immediate benefits. Compared to the common pad-dry-pad-steam process, no salt is used and no steamer is required for a separate fixation step. Compared to the pad-dry-thermofix process, no urea is used and no smoke or deposits are generated, and unlike with the cold pad batch process, direct feedback of the dyeing results ensures no batching time is necessary and guarantees good reproducibility from the lab to bulk production.

An immediate wash off is also unnecessary, allowing for flexible production planning. The process is suitable for pale to dark shades with very good fastness properties. Also waste water treatment is improved by this technology.

*Econtrol is a registered mark of Dystar Colours Distribution GmbH.

• Strategic partnership for automation system in the field of slot dies and coextrusion adapters

Reifenhäuser Extrusion Systems (RES) - the Reifenhäuser Group's business unit specializing in extrusion components - announces a strategic partnership with maku AG at K 2022, the world's largest plastics trade fair. The aim of the cooperation is the joint marketing and further development of the automation system designed by maku for coextrusion adapters and slot dies.

The so-called PAM system (precise, autonomous, mechatronic) is available immediately and exclusively as an automation option for new Reifenhäuser dies and adapters, as well as for aftermarket dies across all manufacturers. PAM enables producers in the field of flat film and sheet production as well as extrusion coating to precisely control the entire hot part (coextrusion adapter and die) via the line's control panel. This is significantly faster and more accurate than conventional control by hand or expansion bolt automation. It enables faster start-up of good production, higher output with lower energy consumption, and thus significantly improved overall equipment efficiency (OEE). The decisive advantage lies in the use of motorized manual adjustment bolts that replace conventional thermal expansion bolts. Reifenhäuser presented the system for the first time at the K 2022.

DiloGroup will be attenting India ITME 2022 (December 8 – 13, 2022), an exhibition for the textile industry, which offers a central forum for dialogue within the textile production sector, including textile machine building, fibre production, ancillaries and accessories. For DiloGroup this event is a good oppportunity to inform customers and interested parties about new developments aimed at improving production technologies with a focus on needlefelts.

Focal points of the development work are:

1. Intense Needling:
   The development efforts of DiloGroup aim at producing nonwovens by “intense needling” instead of water entangling, even for light nonwovens made of fine fibres for the medical and hygiene sector with an area weight of 30 – 100 g/m². This would result in a reduction of the environmentally relevant production costs; per annum to about 1/3 to 1/5 of current.
2. “Fibre Pulp Recycling”
   Fibrous material in nonwovens and particularly used clothes can be successfully recycled, if staple length can be conserved in the tearing process. In the classical tearing process, staple lengths are dramatically reduced and therefore these fibres can only be used as base material for inferior uses in thermal or acoustic insulation or in protective textiles, transportation or protective covers etc.
   When recycling textile waste in the context of the collection of used clothes, the so called “filament-saving” tearing using special tearing machines and methods must be used to produce fibres with longer staple lengths which can be fed to a nonwoven installation. Hence product characteristics can be better specified and controlled.
3. Additive nonwoven production
   The additive production method of the “3D-Lofter” is especially suited for automotive parts with differently distributed masses. It is also suited for uses in the sector of apparel and shoe production.
4. “IsoFeed”-card feeding
   In the field of card feeding, the “IsoFeed” method offers great potential for a more homogeneous card feeding at the same time reducing the variation in cross-machine fibre mass distribution and thus the fibre consumption while conserving the end product quality.

Kornit Digital is collaborating with furniture start-up Cozmo and London design studio Raw-Edges to showcase the unlimited creativity made possible by digitally produced custom sofa jacket designs at the London Design Festival, September 17th -25th. Dubbed “Cheek Prints,” the collection was created sustainably, quickly, and on-demand with Kornit’s digital fashion and textile production solutions. Each unique cover features visually designs intended to transform plain, standard sofas into custom creations with an entirely fresh look and feel. The collection was designed by Raw-Edges at their London design studio.

The sofa collection was produced using Kornit’s Presto direct-to-fabric digital production system. With the on-demand technology, designers can easily and rapidly embrace new possibilities to transform mere concepts into custom fabrics. Digital production removes typical limitations of one fabric, one design at a time – whether it’s a single sofa or many sofas – and at the same cost. For industries ranging from fashion and home décor to other advanced textile applications, the Kornit solution consistently unlocks unlimited creativity – producing garments and fabrics with a high quality and a soft feel.

27^th International Garment Machinery, Spare Parts and Sub-Industry Exhibition, one of the largest exhibitions in Europe ended with great interest. The IGM 2022 Exhibition, which hosted ready-to-wear investors and leading brands of the garment machinery sector in Istanbul for 4 days, satisfied the exhibitors with the number of foreign and domestic visitors and machinery sales.

IGM 2022, Turkey's first and only international exhibition in its field, has become the most comprehensive meeting point of the sector where all technologies used in garment and ready-to-wear production from sewing to cutting, ironing systems to packaging, embroidery to printing are exhibited. IGM 2022, the first international exhibition organized in the garment industry after the pandemic, turned into a platform where many firsts were achieved. Especially domestic machinery manufacturers introduced the latest technologies and innovations developed in the last 4 years for the first time at IGM 2022. In addition, the latest models of embroidery machines were exhibited in working condition only at IGM 2022. International buyers, who had the opportunity to observe and examine all the innovations in the apparel and ready-to-wear sector together, had the opportunity to direct their investments thanks to IGM 2022.

The exhibition, organized in partnership with Tüyap & Teknik Fairs Inc. and in cooperation with KOMİD- Garment Automation Machinery Manufacturers Association and İNSAD- Istanbul Embroidery Industrialists Association, was held at Tüyap Fair and Congress Center on September 8-11. The IGM 2022 Exhibition, which was attended by 100 companies and company representatives from countries including Turkey, Japan, USA, China, South Korea, Brazil, Brazil, Italy, Spain, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, Bangladesh and Iran, was visited by 9822 sector professionals from 64 countries, including 1483 international and 8339 domestic visitors.

Next Meeting on September 21-24, 2023
The next meeting of the IGM 2023 Exhibition will be held at Tüyap Fair and Congress Center between September 21-24, 2023. Considering the dates of the exhibitions organized in the same sector in different countries of the world and Europe and the gains of the sector, an exhibition calendar was determined for the IGM Exhibitions to be held biennially. IGM Exhibition will be organized in 2023 and the following odd years (such as 2025-2027) in order to prevent companies from being under the burden of exhibitions in terms of both time and budget due to participating in more than one exhibition in the same year.