FULL CIRCLE TEXTILES PROJECT FOCUSES ON SCALING POLYESTER RECYCLING

FASHION FOR GOOD LAUNCHES NEW PROJECT TO SCALE POLYESTER RECYCLING FOLLOWING THE SUCCESS OF CELLULOSIC CHEMICAL RECYCLING PROJECT

AMSTERDAM – Fashion for Good today launches the Full Circle Textiles Project – Polyester, with the ambition to validate and scale promising technologies in polyester chemical recycling and to encourage financing and offtake commitments in the fashion industry. Polyester claims 52% of the global fibre market. As the most common fibre in the world, it also represents a significant portion of the 73% of textiles that are landfilled or incinerated annually. A synthetic fibre derived from petroleum, polyester does not naturally break down in the environment, and the production of virgin fibres also perpetuates our reliance on fossil fuels. Chemical recycling is a key solution that promises to address the polyester textile waste challenge.

“Textile recycling is a key focus for Fashion for Good. With the success of the first Full Circle Textiles Project, and proof that a galvanised consortium of stakeholders from across the industry can truly shift the needle, we can now turn our attention to applying these learnings and steps to scale to another critical area; textile-to-textile polyester recycling.” – Katrin Ley – Managing Director, Fashion for Good

A STREAMLINED ECOSYSTEM FOR INNOVATION

The Full Circle Textiles Project – Polyester brings together a consortium of stakeholders including brands, innovators, supply chain partners and catalytic funders – a structure that has proven successful in driving and scaling disruptive innovation in the industry.

The project, initiated and managed by Fashion for Good is made possible by a large group of Fashion for Good partners, contributing their expertise, financial support and services. These include catalytic funder Laudes Foundation, brand partners adidas, BESTSELLER, C&A, PVH Corp., Target and Zalando, and affiliate partners Arvind Limited, Fabrics Division of W. L. Gore & Associates and Teijin Frontier, who have recently joined Fashion for Good.

“A future without fossil fuels in fashion will need us to scale disruptive innovations such as chemical recycling to replace polyester. We’re pleased to continue supporting the industry’s efforts through the Full Circles Textiles Project, with chemically recycled polyester. Our funding allows actors across the supply chain to come together and test these path-breaking solutions, and we eagerly await the results of this phase of the project.” – Anita Chester, Head of Materials at Laudes Foundation
VALIDATING AND SCALING PROMISING INNOVATIONS

To attain a clear idea of the innovations best positioned to address the challenges of recycling polyester textiles, Fashion for Good has enlisted promising innovators in polyester chemical recycling from around the world to participate in the project. These include CuRe Technology, Garbo, gr3n and PerPETual who over the course of the 18-month project will be producing chemically recycled polyester for eventual use in fabric and garment production from post-consumer textile waste. The innovator output will be assessed and validated by participating Fashion for Good brand and supply chain partners.

The project aims to validate the technologies and the scaling potential; prompting further implementation/offtake agreements to drive chemical recycling in the industry and mobilise more funding into the technology.

“Chemical recycling can make fibre-to-fibre recycling a reality and this is a critical step towards reaching BESTSELLER’s ultimate ambition of becoming circular by design. By limiting the use of virgin materials, recycled polyester will dramatically lower the environmental impact of polyester at the same time as we reduce our reliance on virgin petroleum as a raw material.” – Camilla Skjønning Jørgensen, Sustainable Materials & Innovation Manager at BESTSELLER
THE POTENTIAL OF CHEMICAL RECYCLING

Textile recycling is a crucial lever in driving the fashion industry towards closed-loop production and reducing the environmental impact of textile waste. It also has the potential to eliminate the industry’s dependence on virgin raw materials.

Chemical recycling can recycle textile waste into virgin-quality output and can address a wider range of textiles types, providing huge potential to close the loop on textile waste. A relatively nascent area of innovation, textile-to-textile chemical recycling faces significant barriers to scale; including a lack of financing for new technologies, limited brand offtake, and limited and expensive output that competes with cheaper, virgin options.

“At C&A, we see textile-to-textile recycling solutions such as chemically recycled polyester as a key enabler to closing the material loop and reducing virgin resource consumption. This project will help us all in understanding the barriers, impacts and opportunities in the chemical recycling of polyester and is an important foundation to C&A’s commitment to connect principles of circularity to 7 out of 10 of our products by 2028.” – Martha Willis, Senior Manager Sustainable Materials and Circular Innovation at C&A
BUILDING ON PAST SUCCESSES

The Full Circle Textiles Project – Polyester builds on the framework and lessons of the Full Circle Textiles Project, launched in September 2020, which focused on investigating economically viable and scalable solutions for cellulosic chemical recycling and to produce new man-made cellulosic fibres and eventual garments from cotton and cotton-blend textile waste. Having successfully accomplished this objective, the Full Circle Textiles Project further validates the benefit of the consortium structure in scaling disruptive innovation in the industry, and the capability of chemical recycling to accelerate circularity.

“At Zalando, our aim is to drive customer behaviour change towards circular products and experiences. Currently, only 1% of clothing material is looped back into clothing production. By learning the challenges with textile-to-textile polyester recycling and supporting the most promising solutions, we can help to close the loop by designing out waste and pollution” – Laura Coppen, Head of Circularity at Zalando
The four selected innovators, Circ, EVRNU, Infinited Fiber Company and Renewcell, were able to validate their disruptive technologies and produce garments for brand partners PVH Corp. and Kering Group to their quality specifications. The next phase of the project focuses on scaling these solutions and encourages brands, innovators and supply chain partners to collaborate in creating long-term partnerships, catalyse funding to enable scaling, and leverage industry expertise to further develop and implement these technologies.

“The demand for recycled yarns has been clearly rocketing. Especially these days, recycling is not enough, but we need technologies and stories to actually reduce the impact on the environment. This project aims to earnestly reuse textile waste from the apparel industry, not from the beverage industry, by innovative recycling technologies. We’re confident that this project will essentially reduce our environmental impact and give us a better responsibility for our planet.” – Yukihiro Shigemura, General Manager, Technology & Production Division at Teijin Frontier
To further support the development of the infrastructure necessary to scale textile recycling, Fashion for Good initiated the Sorting for Circularity Project and Sorting for Circularity India Project – industry-wide, precompetitive projects that aim to create a greater link between textile sorters and textile recyclers, stimulating a recycling market for unwanted textiles.

Read more about the Full Circle Textiles Project’s outcomes and learnings here.

“Like most brands in the industry, PET is a key fibre for our business, and we recognise the need to understand and invest in future recycling capabilities with a view to lowering resource consumption. For us, this project represents an opportunity to answer some key questions about the future of circularity – how can chemical recycling help us increase availability of rPET, what is the true footprint of those materials and what are the key constraints, all so that we can be sure we’re designing our products responsibly, with the total lifecycle impact in mind” – Craig Lindemann, Sustainability Technologist, Gore Fabrics Division

ARCHROMA UNDERPINS PRESENCE IN SWITZERLAND WITH NEW BASEL REGION
HEADQUARTERS AND A DEDICATED ‘TECH HUB’

Reinach, Switzerland, 9 December 2021 – Archroma, a global leader in specialty chemicals towards sustainable solutions, today announced the relocation of its headquarters to Pratteln, just outside Basel, and a customised R&D role for its existing Reinach site.

Archroma’s new Haus der Wirtschaft (HWD) headquarters is located in a business hub that hosts the Economic Chamber Baselland with other companies, as well as a fully serviced conference and event center. The new offices have been designed to support a smooth and efficient collaborative work and visitor experience.

The move comes after a decade of growth at Archroma’s TechCenter building in Reinach, also near Basel, which evolved from being a dedicated technical center to hosting a growing number of corporate services and teams. With the opening of the new HWD headquarters, the Reinach TechCenter, designed to accommodate laboratories and technical expert teams, will return to its roots with focus on the global R&D and application development, supporting those of the Archroma Competence Centers (CC) which are located in Switzerland: CC Textile Finishing; CC Textile Repellents; CC Paper Coloration; and CC Paper Whiteness.

“With our new HWD corporate headquarters we are joining a dynamic business hub,” comments Heike van de Kerkhof, CEO at Archroma. “We are excited to refocus our Reinach site as a true ‘tech hub’ to provide innovative, sustainable solutions and services to our customers to help them increase the value of their products. Our science and technology expertise, coupled with in depth market, customer and regulatory understanding, provide the platforms for the creation of safer, more sustainable chemicals and practices in the industries we serve. With this latest development we are strongly reaffirming our deep commitment to our Swiss roots and presence.”

The transition will take place in December 2021.

Materia Inc. to Join ExxonMobil Chemical Company as Wholly-Owned Subsidiary

Umicore and Volkswagen AG to create European EV battery materials Joint Venture 

Umicore and Volkswagen AG plan to establish a joint venture to build up precursor and cathode material production capacities in Europe to supply Volkswagen AG’s European battery cell production, making a considerable contribution to the region’s transition towards cleaner mobility.

This partnership will be the first of its kind in the European automotive market. It will help achieve the ambitions of the European Green Deal, including the establishment of a sustainable battery supply chain, and is a strong signal for the ongoing roll-out of innovative battery cell technologies and capabilities in the region.

The intention is to gradually ramp up the JV’s precursor and cathode material production capacity. This would start in 2025 with an initial annual production of 20 GWh for Volkswagen AG’s plant in Salzgitter, Germany, and should grow to an annual production capacity of up to 160 GWh by the end of the decade. This compares to an annual production capacity capable of powering about 2.2 million full electric vehicles (EVs).  

At the same time, next to the intended JV, Umicore will continue to steadfastly develop its technological and production capabilities to serve other customers and regions.

“As a leader in clean mobility materials, we are committed to support our automotive and battery-cell customers with their electrification strategies.

We are very pleased to partner with Volkswagen in this unique joint venture and will bring in our long-standing and proven expertise in battery materials, as well as our strong commitment and solutions to today’s sustainability challenges.

The complementarity of our extensive technology, innovation and industrial knowhow, and shared sustainability convictions will provide a strong framework for the JV and will give us a considerable first-mover advantage.” 

Mathias Miedreich, CEO of Umicore

Thomas Schmall, Member of the Board of Management of Volkswagen Group for Technology and CEO of Volkswagen Group Components: “Volkswagen is implementing its battery strategy very consistently and at a high pace. The Volkswagen unified cell must be at the forefront of performance, costs and sustainability right from the start. Teaming up with Umicore enables us to establish a state-of-the-art supply chain in Europe as we share common values such as responsible sourcing of raw materials, as well as closed-loop thinking.” 

The partnership’s significant scale will provide secure and cost-competitive supplies of innovative, sustainably sourced and tailored high-performance cathode materials for Volkswagen AG’s ambitious unified cell strategy. It provides Umicore secured access to an important part of the European demand for EV cathode materials, which will unlock significant economies of scale and represents a major leap forward in the further roll-out of its strategy to be a global leader in clean mobility materials. 

In the context of the JV, Umicore and Volkswagen AG will furthermore collaborate on the sustainable and responsible sourcing of raw materials, which is a strong area of expertise of Umicore. Both parties aim to include at a later stage, elements of refining and battery recycling into the scope of the JV.

The planned JV is subject to final agreements and customary conditions, including regulatory approvals.

Short-term earnings in battery materials hampered by lower volumes in combination with higher fixed costs related to recent and ongoing expansions

The JV’s portfolio offering will cover next-generation technologies, including a very large portion of high-nickel chemistries. The latter have become faster than anticipated the car industry’s preferred solution to enable higher energy density and longer driving ranges and this is consequently significantly impacting demand for mid-nickel chemistries. Umicore successfully fast-tracked innovation on the next generation higher nickel product and process capabilities and now offers industry-leading high nickel cathode material technology, as also witnessed by today’s announcement. 

In the short-term, Umicore is still largely exposed to mid-nickel NMC platforms. Customer demand projections for certain of these qualified mid-nickel platforms are being scaled back to their minimum offtake commitments, resulting in lower volume forecasts for 2022 and 2023, beyond the negative volume impacts from semiconductor shortages. Consequently, Umicore now expects growth in its cathode material sales volumes in 2022 and 2023 to be less than previously anticipated and to be below the anticipated global market growth. These scaled-down short-term volume expectations, together with the need to increase fixed costs to prepare for the expected steep mid-term growth, such as higher R&D expenses and costs related to the recent and ongoing expansions, are likely to result in lower-than-expected earnings growth in Rechargeable Battery Materials in 2022 and 2023. Hence, assuming that Cobalt & Specialty Materials will not repeat the exceptionally strong 2021 performance, the earnings of the Energy & Surface Technologies segment are not expected to show a significant uplift over that period.

Strong mid-term earnings growth comforted

Umicore’s innovation pipeline and strong track record in cathode material technologies, alongside with its flexible production system have allowed to act with agility to the rapidly evolving customer voice. The intention to set up this JV with Volkswagen AG contributes further strength to the Group’s competitive positioning. Its strong technology roadmap, synced with customers’ requirements, puts Umicore in a unique position to disproportionally benefit in the mid-term from the extremely high anticipated growth in EV battery materials. This will significantly boost operating leverage through economies of scale and will allow Umicore to achieve attractive margins and returns in its fast-growing battery materials activity. 

https://www.umicore.com/

B.I.G. Yarns announces major investments in new yarn technology

Wielsbeke, Belgium – December 8, 2021 – Building a strong future. B.I.G. Yarns reveals significant investment in its next-generation Polyamide (PA) technology to help global carpet tile manufacturers meet the demands of the contract market. In addition to this key investment, the company also announces its decision to become a new producer of polyester (PET) yarns for the automotive industry.

The two announcements, made today, reinforce the business’ leadership in yarn innovation and commitment to being at the forefront of supporting changing end-market needs.

B.I.G Yarns is stepping up its focus on developing and producing one-step 3Ply PA yarns using next-generation technology to answer needs for flexibility and broader design options in the carpet tile segment. Total production capacity for one-step 3Ply yarns will increase by > 20% through new lines installed at the plant in France, creating higher output and greater supply security by serving customers from all three of its global plants.

The new lines use B.I.G. Yarns’ cutting-edge PA yarn technology which expands design, contrast and colour freedoms for carpet tile manufacturers, and increases flexibility in lot sizes. These advances enable customers to respond quickly to developments in the contract market. In addition, the new technology features a higher level of automation which improves ergonomics for B.I.G. Yarns’ employees. Importantly, it also optimizes energy use which contributes in energy savings at the French site specifically. The new production lines will be deployed from mid-2022.

To enhance support for a future of more sustainable automotive interiors, B.I.G. Yarns will enter into PET yarn production for the first time and offer a portfolio of PET yarns by the third quarter of 2022. These will be available for automotive applications alongside its EqoCycle ® recycled-based PA6 yarns.

Emmanuel Colchen, General Manager, B.I.G. Yarns, comments: “With the additional capacity in the best-in-class 1 step 3ply PA yarns technology and expanding our portfolio into a new direction with PET, B.I.G. Yarns is taking strategic steps to better serve the evolving needs of its customers. We are opening up exciting new opportunities with a continuous focus on innovation and sustainability. We will generate an important step that will support our goal of reducing our carbon footprint. We want to build a strong future path for our business and our customers, and these investments advance that commitment in full alignment with our vision. We also like to acknowledge and thank the support of the Hauts-de-France region and French “Relance Program” which supported our initiative strongly and selected our French production plant for the industrial investment acceleration fund. We are grateful for this encouragement and belief in the B.I.G. Yarns' endeavors.”

B.I.G. Yarns is proactive in developing new products that better serve customers’ needs in a sustainable way. Its sustainable solutions are at the forefront of industry product design, and it is fully committed to integrating the UN Sustainable Development Goals in its operations. Its 2 European plants have this year been granted a first Sustainable Business Charter 2021 and from July both sites ran on 100% on green electricity, reducing its CO 2 emissions for its electricity use by 35% in 2021, and with 75% in 2022.

IBB Netzwerk GmbH will act as central contact point for bio-based nanomaterials in Europe

KRAIBURG TPE introduces new TPE for drinking water applications

KRAIBURG TPE, the recognized global TPE manufacturer has developed a new TPE for drinking water applications with NSF/ANSI 61- compliance exclusively for the Asia Pacific market.

Ideal for a wide scope of drinking water applications

KRAIBURG TPE’s new TF8ONG-NTRL compound comes in one hardness, namely 80 Shore A with 0.95g/cm density. Its durability and flexibility make it suitable for typical drinking water applications such as tubes and hoses, elastomer pipe fittings, couplings, flexible pipe fittings, plumbing manifolds, and many others.

Low odor and flavor properties
Besides fulfilling the NSF/ANSI 61 testing standard under section 4 with cold water (23°C) and domestic hot water applications (60°C), TF8ONG-NTRL also meets the low odor, flavor and total organic compound (TOC) testing standards according to KTW under hot water application (60°C). In addition, the compound exhibits good adhesion with PP.

Global regulatory compliance
The compound does not have any curing and crosslinking material in it and meets the Regulation (EU) No. 10/2011 and US FDA CFR 21 (raw material conformity).

The TF8ONG-NTRL compound is available in natural color and can be processed via injection molding or extrusion.

THERMOLAST® H TPE for medical device applications

Thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs) are gaining popularity in medical device applications due to their high purity, durability, recyclability, and other vital properties and features.

THERMOLAST® H is created to deliver high-quality material solutions, specifically for the Asia Pacific healthcare and medical device markets. It meets the Cytotoxicity ISO 10993-5, GB/T 16886.5, China GB 4806 – 2016, US FDA CFR 21, Regulation (EU) No 10/2011, and REACH and RoHS, as well as a variety of global food contact and medical standards.

Comfort and ease of use
Technology in medical devices must deliver user-friendliness and easy operation. In addition, they must also be ergonomically-driven for manual dexterity while ensuring control and comfort when using them.

KRAIBURG TPE’s THERMOLAST® H is the ideal material solution for medical equipment, thanks to its excellent haptics and soft touch surface. It can be used for buttons, handles, grips, and other medical device applications.

More benefits at hand
THERMOLAST® H series compounds have excellent compression and sterilizability when autoclaved at 121°C, EtO. They come in a variety of hardness, ranging from 30 to 90 Shore A, with optimizable processability. Moreover, the translucent compounds can be colored to achieve a variety of chromatic effects.

THE WORLD´S FIRST BIO-ATTRIBUTED VINYL GLOVES

Jokasafe is the first vinyl glove manufacturer to launch a new collection based on highly sustainable BIOVYN ™ vinyl.

Designed for demanding professional applications, all Jokasafe® products use high-quality European vinyl and are extremely durable, offering superior protection against chemicals and mechanical abrasion as well as extreme weather conditions.

As part of its sustainability strategy, Jokasafe will launch its new glove collection Jokasafe® – bio-attributed vinyl gloves in early 2022.

Developed by INOVYN, Europe’s leading vinyl producer, BIOVYN™ is a next generation vinyl made using 100 % renewable feedstock. By replacing its current fossil vinyl feedstock with BIOVYN™, Jokasafe will reduce its carbon footprint in the form of a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Further-more the improvement does not require any changes to Jokasafe’s production processes.

“We are delighted to be working in collaboration with INOVYN to develop our new range”, says Jussi Virtanen Production and R&D Manager of Jokasafe. ”This latest range combines the quality and performance for which we are renowned with superior sustainability credentials demanded by our customers as we move towards a carbon neutral future.”

https://www.jokasafe.fi/