Part one in a two-part feature focusing on the technical textiles industry in the United States

By Steve Warner, Contributing Editor

As the United States enters the 9th year of economic recovery from the recession, the outlook for technical textiles is strong. In fact, 2018 may be the start of the most defining period for the industry since the introduction of man-made fibers in the 1960s opened tremendous opportunities in markets such as aerospace, military, medical and construction.

What’s happened? It’s not sudden. The industry usually tends to experience gains from evolutionary trends rather than specific market disrupters. There are several converging factors, though, which lead to the faster positive outlook:

• Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased 2.3 percent in 2017 — compared with a 1.5 percent increase the previous year — and stable commodity pricing gave consumers spending confidence;
• Two of the largest consumers of technical textiles — military and infrastructure — are about to receive huge new government financial infusions;
• Pent up demand after years of cutbacks;
• Non-technical textile companies are paying attention to the industry such as Alphabet (Google) in its development of smart textile consumer applications; and
• U.S. trade policy is moving more towards bilateral rather than multilateral agreements which tend to allow more focus on protecting domestic sourcing.

The United States continues to see declines in textile manufacturing employment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the 2017 job loss was 4,100 or 1.5 percent. What is notable is that imports are not considered to be a significant factor in the decline as has been the case in previous years. The biggest factor accounting for job loss is modernization and automated assemblies. It takes fewer people to operate a plant. It’s time to start thinking declining employment is not a sign of failure. Success should not be measured by how many are employed compared to 30 years ago.

The technical textiles industry is broad and diverse and almost impossible to define. In general, technical textiles represent the largest segment of the domestic textile industry’s output. Currently, about 42 percent of the wovens, knits and nonwovens are going into technical textile end-product segments. The largest markets are automotive, military/law enforcement, healthcare and construction.

Trade Issues

What a difference a couple of years can make. One of President Barack Obama’s legacy programs was the National Export Initiative (NEI), which was established with the hopes of greatly expanding U.S. exports, including new trade agreements. As part of the push, the passage of the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) and Trade Preference Extension Act was observed, as well as the likely passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement and its European counterpart Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership (T-TIP).

The Trump administration, however, is operating under the mandate that reciprocity in trade implies that as we grant access to U.S. markets, the U.S. gains access to foreign markets. In his “2018 Trade Policy Agenda and 2017 Annual Report,” President Trump laid out his position that past and pending trade agreements leave U.S. workers and businesses at a disadvantage in global markets because other nations benefit from market-distorting practices, and these agreements prevents the United States from responding to changing market conditions.

The first act of the new administration was to withdraw the already negotiated TPP agreement from Congressional consideration. Further, the change in administrations, plus the unsettled business of the European Union (E.U.) dealing with Britain’s Exit from the European Union (BREXIT), has cooled interest in continuing T-TIP negotiations.

While TPP contained some concerns for the technical textiles industry such as illegal shipments passing through the participating countries, most issues for textiles addressed manufacturers in the apparel value chain. The Washington-based National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO), the domestic textile industry’s lobbying organization, had successfully negotiated adding the “yarn forward” rule of origin into the TPP agreement in exchange for NCTO’s support of TPA.

T-TIP is more worrisome because of the passed TPA, which prevents Congress from making any changes once negotiations are finalized. Unlike TPP, T-TIP is a bilateral negotiation between the United States and the European Union, an organization representing the interests of its 27-nation members. The E.U.’s textile objective in T-TIP is to lift the restrictive criteria of the Berry Amendment and allowing its members access to source technical textile products to the U.S. military.

To be fair, the Obama administration had publicly opposed giving up the Berry Amendment; however, U.S. trade negotiators have a history of trading away the textile industry to gain concessions that protect other industries such as pharmaceutical, steel and automotive. Losing protection provided by the Berry Amendment would have a devastating impact on the U.S. technical textiles industry because the U.S. military has been a reliable market through periods of industry economic and trade challenges.

The United States may not be done with either T-TIP or TPP — now renamed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. T-TIP has merely been set aside; the talks have not ended. And President Trump has indicated he is open to pursuing a revised TPP agreement though it’s unclear what revisions he wants. Some 25 Republican Senators recently sent President Trump a letter urging him to get the United States involved again in the negotiations.

While T-TIP is sidelined at least for a while, a Canada-E.U. free trade agreement (FTA) went into effect September 2017. The agreement puts the United States at a disadvantage relative to Canada with a relaxed rule of origin for textiles and also the specific inclusion of reciprocal opportunities between the countries on government procurement. Going forward on trade, the Trump administration has stated its preference for bilateral rather than multinational agreements. It has set its sights on renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and possibly the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR).

One positive factor as trade negotiations that affect the U.S. textile industry move along, is that Wilbur Ross is the secretary of the Department of Commerce (DOC). Until recently, Ross owned the Greensboro, N.C.-based multinational textile manufacturer International Textile Group (ITG).

The challenge in articulating the technical textiles industry’s positions in trade negotiations is that most of the industry’s end products are component parts of larger items such as cars and recreational items. They are not as easily identifiable as products in the apparel and home furnishings markets.

NAFTA Status

In the NAFTA negotiations, NCTO has focused on textile manufacturing issues that are predominantly apparel-oriented, but also may offer benefits to the technical textiles industry. The organization has identified four key points from the current agreement that should be reconsidered including:

• eliminating tariff preference levels (TPLs) on apparel, non-apparel sewn products, fabrics and yarns;
• requiring use of NAFTA-origin components beyond the “essential character” of the fabric — sewing thread, pocketing and narrow elastics for example;
• strengthening Buy American laws for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) textiles and clothing by closing the Kissell Amendment loophole for Canada and Mexico; and
• strengthening customs enforcement.

But the key NAFTA renegotiating issue for the technical textiles industry isn’t with TPLs and probably not even yarn forward; it’s what could happen with the end products covered within the agreement, specifically in automotive manufacturing. The Trump administration is pursuing a tricky course because the automotive industry in Mexico is the largest export market for U.S. technical textiles.

In the current NAFTA agreement, approximately 62 percent of component parts in a vehicle made in North America must be from one of the three countries — Mexico, Canada or the United States. The Trump administration has proposed raising that threshold to 85 percent, of which half would have to come from the United States and the rest be divided equally between Canada and Mexico. Since textile products are found in numerous vehicle applications such as seating, headliners and airbags, changes to NAFTA could be a serious market disrupter with disastrous implications if Mexico doesn’t accept U.S. demands and pulls out of the agreement altogether to protect its growing automotive industry; or if auto makers themselves decide that new higher thresholds of U.S. components could make the vehicles more expensive and decide to push more production back overseas.

An intriguing aspect of the negotiations is that Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto’s term ends this year and elections will be held in July. The likely winner at this point will be his party’s opponent, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. As strained as the relationship already is with Mexico, Lopez has promised to get even tougher on trade with President Trump. Canada and the United States also will hold elections in 2018, so it is probable that nothing will be accomplished until at least next year when the dust settles from the elections.

Impact Of Trade Agreements On Domestic Preference Laws

Trade agreements like NAFTA, as well as the World Trade Organization (WTO), can undermine the intent of other domestic preference laws. The Kissell Amendment enacted in 2009 is supposed to restrict DHS from using its funds to procure certain fibers, textiles, and clothing that are not grown, reprocessed, reused, or produced in the United States. A recent study by the General Accounting Office (GAO) found, however, that because of multiple trade agreement factors, foreign textile product procurement is prevalent by DHS. From September 2014 to June 2017, 58 percent of the $164.6 million of DHS textile items procured were foreign-sourced, including uniforms for Secret Service, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

As of Textile World’s press time, the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill, which has been approved by the U.S. House of Representatives, had not yet been passed by the Senate. The trade bill includes a correction for certain inputs that can affect Berry waivers.

Export Focus

Looking at exports, DOC’s International Trade Administration (ITA) has identified four sectors that it watches for technical textiles: specialty and industrial fabrics; medical textiles; protective apparel; and nonwovens.

ITA also ranked the top five countries for U.S. exports, which are:

1. Mexico;
2. Canada;
3. China;
4. Germany; and
5. the United Kingdom.

Mexico accounts for almost 50 percent of the domestic technical textiles exported. Canada is the second largest with its demand coming from the oil and gas industry, construction and healthcare markets. China is a country to watch. Although it ranks a distant third after Canada, U.S. exports to the country have seen double-digit increases over the past few years.

It’s interesting to note, that according to latest China government statistics, the United States is considered the fourth largest region exporting technical textiles to China, after Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.

Editor’s Note: Steve Warner is the publisher of BeaverLake6 Report, a web-based newsletter reporting on trends, data and issues that influence the global technical textiles industry. He can be reached at beaverlake6@hotmail.com. All trade information was current as of TW’s press time. Part two of this article — focusing on automotive, military and law enforcement applications for technical textiles — will appear in an upcoming issue of TW.

March/April 2018

Firestone Fibers & Textiles is growing beyond its traditional tire and building textile products into highly-specialized industrial and composite fabrics for sale outside the company.

By Rachael S. Davis, Executive Editor

Firestone is a name and a brand synonymous with tires, various forms of racing and the Indianapolis 500® Mile Race. The company has a long history with that famous race, and since 2000, has been the sole tire supplier to the Verizon IndyCar® Series. However, Firestone also happens to incorporate a textile division dedicated to the development and production of textile products for a variety of end uses.

Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. was established at the turn of the 20th century by Harvey Samuel Firestone. Shortly after its inception, the company produced the first mass produced automotive tires. Then, in 1935, Firestone Fibers & Textiles Co. LLC (FSFT) was created to supply tire cord and related materials to the growing tire business. During World War II, FSFT produced items for the U.S. military including artillery shells and rubberized military products. In the more than 80 years since it was founded, the company has accumulated significant amounts of manufacturing experience making tire cord, as well as fabrics for tire linings and building products.

Flexible Composites

A typical passenger car tire is a flexible composite product made of numerous layers including a liner, body ply, side wall, beads, apex, belt package, tread and cushion gum. Other components can be incorporated depending on the tire’s use, performance level and price point. Each component layer is built up on a drum form before it is cured using heat and pressure. Tire cord is incorporated in the body ply and bead, and textiles also are integrated into the lining.

Tire cord is a polyester- or nylon-based unidirectional fabric woven using just 1.3 picks per inch to hold the cords together for processing. Once woven, the cord is treated with a resorcinol/formaldehyde/latex (RFL) coating that allows the cords to bond to rubber as the tires are heated. RFL is a strong, heat resistant and highly flexible adhesive that is well suited to rubber-to-textile bonding. For years, tire cord has been one of FSFT’s primary products.

FSFT also has traditionally produced woven fabrics for mechanical rubber goods, industrial hoses as well as tires; and polypropylene multifilament/monofilament woven fabrics used as liner fabrics. The company also produces weft insertion fabrics primarily used in roofing products. Its TireTough™ fabrics are used in many applications including automotive belts, brake diaphragms, conveyor belts, roofing, coated fabrics, military/party tents, cargo/safety netting, pillow tanks, industrial hoses, air ducts, sign fabrics, tires, truck covers and inflatables. The fabrics are used primarily in-house by Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations, Firestone Building Products – Commercial Roofing Systems, and Firestone Industrial Products businesses.

The company processes some 90 million pounds of yarns each year and processes enough yarn each day to circle the earth 13 times. While all yarn is purchased from outside sources, FSFT has direct cable twisters and ring twisting equipment allowing it to ply anywhere from 2 to 12 ends of yarn. On the weaving side, the company has air-jet machines to weave the tire cord, weft-insertion capability, and rapier machines for industrial fabrics.

Reconfiguration

FSFT is headquartered in Nashville, Tenn., and has operations in Kings Mountain, N.C., and Gastonia, N.C., as well as Woodstock, Ontario. In October 2017, FSFT announced it will close its Woodstock plant following careful consideration and thorough assessment of its business model and the plant’s fit within its production portfolio. Production began to ramp down at the end of 2017, and the plant will cease operations completely by the end of 2018. As part of an ongoing effort to optimize its portfolio, processes and culture, FSFT will increase the production and output of its Kings Mountain plant. Production will begin to ramp up at the end of 2018, and continue to increase through March 2019. To facilitate the increase in capacity, FSFT is adding a 100,000-square-foot structure that will house equipment that is being transferred from another operating location.

“We are in the process of ramping down our operations in Woodstock, but we are expanding here in Kings Mountain,” said Marty Luebbers, product development manager, FSFT. “By the end of this year, we plan to be up and running in Kings Mountain with the volume of products Woodstock was running. Basically, from a tire cord standpoint, we’ve primarily been the polyester producer and Woodstock was the nylon producer. But moving forward, we’ll be producing all the polyester and nylon tire cord products here in Kings Mountain.”

Quality, Environmental Emphasis

The company’s Kings Mountain and Gastonia facilities are ISO 9002 certified and have been ISO 14001 certified since 1999. More recently, the company’s ISO certificate was updated to include design and development in advance of ramping up its outside sales efforts.

FSFT maintains modern quality control laboratories to support company-wide quality initiatives, and recently received a Carolina Star for Safety through a program “designed to recognize employers and employees who have implemented effective safety and health management systems and maintain injury and illness rates that meet the criteria for participation.”

On the environmental side, FSFT was recognized by the North Carolina Environmental Stewardship Initiative as a Steward, which is the highest level in the program. In 2013, Kings Mountain was awarded a Wildlife at Work Certification from the Wildlife Habitat Council; and in 2014, the company achieved zero waste to landfill status. In addition, the company currently uses a proprietary process to apply the RFL coating to the tire cord, but is working to develop a new process that removes formaldehyde from the equation.

Growing Beyond In-House Consumption

More recently, the company has been working to grow sales outside of Firestone, especially in technical fabrics. The focus now for FSFT is to transition beyond traditional mechanical/rubber goods into industrial and technical fabrics.

“We are innovating by combining non-traditional fibers and mixing fiber types,” Luebbers said. “Nylon and polyester processing is the traditional business for us, but we’re now getting into aramids, UHMWPE [ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene] and have the ability to process metal fibers. We’re expanding into markets we didn’t play in before, and going out to the marketplace to show our capabilities and the hybrid possibilities.”

FSFT is experimenting with many different hybrid fabrics. “We define a hybrid product as one where dissimilar yarns are combined to give the final product properties that one stand-alone fiber cannot give,” Luebbers said.

“Every fiber has a positive and a negative. Whether it is strength, stretch, cost or some other property. Creating a hybrid product requires the ability to take advantage of the positives of one fiber with the positives of a different fiber while offsetting the negatives of both fibers if they were standing alone.

“We can create hybrids in many various ways,” Luebbers continued. “We can combine the fibers prior to weaving to produce a blended cord or yarn. Or, we can combine them during weaving. The process is really dependent on what the final properties are that we want to achieve.”

The company has extensive capabilities and has produced numerous hybrid products including polyester/carbon blends for antistatic applications, texturized carbon/nylon fabrics for absorption applications, RFL-treated nylon aramids blends, aramid/low melt polyester blends for resin-free bonding applications, and RFL-treated nylon/aramid hybrid fabrics used in European passenger train bellows. The list of possibilities is long and growing.

Innovative Solutions

Innovation and development at FSFT often starts with a request from Bridgestone’s Americas Technical Center located in Akron, Ohio, or from customers who are looking for fabrics with specific properties. FSFT then drives the development forward as it looks for innovative solutions to fulfill the requests.

“Some of our projects begin with a request from Akron for a product that hits certain properties based on how they know they want the cord to function in a tire,” Luebbers said. “They may need a certain strength per weight or specific weight or elongation. We can then take those same ideas and concepts and utilize them in non-tire projects for the open market.

“One example is a nylon and hybrid cord we worked on for tire applications that is now also used in a woven fabric that is RFL treated and used in an industrial application in Europe,” he added.

FSFT also works with customers to develop innovative products that fulfill customers’ requirements. “Most of the requests brought to us are for lighter, stronger and lower gauge products,” reported Luebbers. “Then I get to design a fabric that meets their criteria. That’s the fun part!”

The company continually updates machinery and adds new technologies to stay modern and at the forefront of technology. FSFT recently added new rapier looms for industrial weaving and plans to add more as volumes dictate. That investment allowed the company to develop and produce innovative hybrid products.

A significant investment also was recently made at the Gastonia facility to convert a warehouse into a space dedicated to carbon processing for composite products. At the moment, the facility features a pilot line and laboratory-scale equipment including specialized twisting machines, braiding machinery, cutting equipment and freezer space for storing prepreg materials. In addition to carbon weaving, FSFT also is experimenting with Vectran™ liquid crystal polymers and basalt materials. The company has the capability to quickly scale and ramp up production when the time is right.

“We attended CAMX in Orlando in 2017 and were excited about the amount of interest we had in the composite samples we were showing,” Luebbers reported. “There was a lot of interest in some of the hybrid composite reinforcements we had on display, and we left the show with some great contacts and potential partnerships that we are working to develop.”

Given the company’s strong brand, a clear path forward and the resources to get there, FSFT certainly appears to be heading in the right direction.

March/April 2018

Austria-based Lenzing Group is capitalizing on its fiber knowledge as it seeks inventive applications for its sustainable fibers.

By Marina Crnoja-Cosic

Lenzing Group, a producer of high quality, botanic, cellulose fibers, has worked to expand its 80 years of experience creating sustainable textiles fibers to other markets. The Austria-based company established a stand-alone business unit to focus on inventive applications for its sustainable fiber technologies to new industries. The department of industrial applications has identified several areas of interest including footwear, technical textiles, technical nonwovens, packaging and filtration. However, agricultural applications are showing particular promise for reducing plastic use without sacrificing the performance farmers must have for successful operations. Botanic fibers also offer benefits in food applications.

“The agriculture industry is coming under scrutiny by consumers, regulators, and NGOs [non-governmental organizations] for its plastic waste generation,” said Marina Crnoja-Cosic head of the business unit. “The industry puts out about 5 million metric tons of plastic waste a year with approximately 60 percent of that waste going into our oceans.” In light of those figures, many agriculture industry leaders and governments, particularly in Europe and North America, are looking for change.

Plastic use in agriculture extends from the farm to the grocery store. Farmers use disposable products like films, twine, rope, packaging, and other items, most of which are currently made out of plastic with the vast majority trashed after the first use. Plastic is used extensively in consumer packaging for agricultural products as well. Nets, bags, labels, films, and other packaging elements are routinely made out of plastic. In addition to concerns about plastic waste, consumers increasingly are worried about harmful chemicals in food packaging, especially with the corresponding growth of interest in organic and other sustainable food sources. The combination of these consumer issues suggests that botanic options can offer solutions on many fronts.

A Viable Botanic Solution

LENZING™ Lyocell fibers based on wood offer tremendous promise in agricultural applications. The fiber’s sustainability profile is well-known. First, the raw material is wood harvested from responsibly managed and renewable forests. Next, the Lenzing Lyocell fibers are produced in a proprietary closed loop manufacturing process that is water and energy efficient and boasts almost 100-percent solvent recovery and recycling. In fact, this special manufacturing technique has earned Lenzing the “European Award for the Environment” from the European Commission.

The natural origins and responsible manufacturing methods combine to make the fiber extremely attractive for sustainable agriculture. Lenzing Lyocell fibers deliver on the industry’s stringent performance requirements as well. The fibers are known across the textile industry for their tenacity. As an option to the other choices agricultural operations have, ropes and twines made out of Lenzing Lyocell fibers can deliver similar performance to the plastic-based product.

Most importantly for agriculture’s plastics issue, the Lenzing fiber is 100-percent biodegradable. That means that if agricultural products made using Lenzing Lyocell fibers end up in the trash, they will break down into harmless chemical components in a fairly short amount of time. And, perhaps more importantly, Lenzing Lyocell fibers have been proven to be 100-percent biodegradable in seawater as well. That’s even better news for the planet and can reduce the burden that agricultural waste imposes on the oceanic ecosystem.

More good news about Lenzing’s Lyocell fibers is that they are 100-percent compostable. Instead of trashing the fiber materials after use, farmers may compost and convert them through natural processes into beneficial materials that will nourish the soil. Because the fiber is made from wood, a renewable raw material, and is sustainably manufactured, it decomposes without depositing harmful chemicals into the ecosystem.

Raise A Stein To Botanic Fibers

Hops farming perfectly showcases the multi-level value a strong, yet compostable, fiber like Lenzing Lyocell can bring to the agriculture market. Hops, a grain cherished by beer lovers, requires steel supports for the hops plants. After the grain is harvested, these steel supports must be separated from the hops plant stalks and thrown away. They are not reusable.

When the steel supports are replaced with products based on Lenzing Lyocell fibers, many benefits are gained. Tests show equal performance with regards to holding up the plants effectively throughout the growing cycle. However, after harvest, the fiber supports simply are composted with the plant stalks. Labor costs to separate the steel supports from the plant stalks are eliminated; landfill burden caused by disposing of the steel supports is removed; time is saved; more enriching compost, a valuable asset for a farmer, is generated; and not to mention that breweries targeting today’s sustainability-minded consumers will have a great story to enrich their marketing campaigns.

From Land To Sea To Shelf

The benefits of botanic fibers for agriculture on land are evident and the fiber also may find use in aquatic applications. The inherent strength makes it an ideal fiber for net structures for shellfish farming. Lenzing has tested mussel nets and socks made using Lenzing Lyocell fibers with great success and these botanic nets currently are in use in the Adriatic Sea.

Sustainability advantages in aquatic farming are evident when the netting is housed in the oceanic ecosystem. If pieces of the nets break off, they harmlessly will decompose rather than building up in the ocean. The fiber is strong enough to withstand the long mussel growth season and provides a reliable infrastructure on which the shellfish can thrive. The new nets also stand up to the mechanical rigors of harvesting and processing. After harvesting and processing, the nets can be composted to close the sustainability loop. If they are just discarded instead, botanic nets will biodegrade in seawater or in soil.

The botanic fibers are exceedingly pure and free of potentially harmful chemical contaminants. They are tested according to stringent European Union criteria for materials that come into contact with food. Therefore, they can be used without concern in a wide variety of food applications, which includes food packaging. Net bags made using Lenzing botanic fibers provide clean, sustainable packaging that meets all performance criteria. Lenzing for packaging completes a sustainability statement for farmers trying to present their produce, fruit and vegetables, or other foodstuffs to consumers as healthier, cleaner, or more environmentally responsible.

Lenzing is looking at other opportunities to replace plastic with botanic fibers in agriculture and packaging. Mulches, trellises, and other packaging applications are in the product development hopper. “Farmers need help with plastics reduction now,” Crnoja-Cosic said. “Farmers are coming under pressure from consumers, regulators, and food retailers to improve the sustainability of their operations and comply with the emerging demands for circular economy in all markets.’

Future Developments

While Lenzing has borrowed extensively from its textile heritage to develop botanic innovations for the agriculture market, the company’s new business unit also intends to close the loop back to technical textiles and industrial applications. “We are just beginning to develop the extensive opportunities to work with the agriculture industry to improve farming sustainability, reduce the burdens plastic use places on landfills and oceans, and to offer consumers more botanic options,” Crnoja-Cosic said. “The knowledge we gain from agriculture will help us expand applications for technical textiles as well.”

Technical textiles obviously are a market where wood-based fibers from Lenzing can deliver the same functional performance as plastic without the environmental negatives. Currently, Lenzing is evaluating additional promising applications where sustainability meets demanding technical performance criteria required for coated fabrics, filters and even thermoplastic reinforcement and composite materials. Footwear offers exciting opportunities and is addressed in Lenzing’s sole-to-lace commitment to finding botanic fiber solutions for shoes.

Botanic fibers can offer a sustainable choice without sacrificing technical performance for many industries that currently rely heavily on plastics. Made using renewable raw materials, manufactured in a resource-considerate, closed-loop process, and fully biodegradable in soil and seawater, botanic fibers like Lenzing fibers can help companies address the increasing calls-to-action from consumers, NGOs, governments and market leaders.

“Lenzing has shown that botanic fibers provide a highly effective and sustainable option, and we are eager to partner with companies who want to make the switch to environmentally considerate materials,” concluded Crnoja-Cosic.

Disclaimer: LENZING™ is a trademark of Lenzing AG

March/April 2018

Monforts coating and finishing technology provides advanced textile manufacturers flexibility to successfully negotiate diverse markets.

By Jürgen Hanel

Technical textiles are extremely diverse in their end-use applications and manufacturers can be called upon to quickly produce a succession of materials with widely differing properties and performance applications – often within a single shift.

For customers of Germany-based A. Monforts Textilmaschinen GmbH & Co. KG, these materials range from substrates for digitally-printed soft signage to carbon fabrics for today’s high-performance composites, and from filter media that must perform in extreme temperatures to flame-retardant barrier fabrics.

Then there are the heavy-duty membranes employed in the collection and storage of methane in biogas plants, as well as materials equipped with sensors and electrical conductors now used as base liners in dye-sensitized solar cells, to name just a few examples.

These very different materials, however, have one thing in common – they all require expert coating and finishing for maximum efficiency. The technology must allow ultimate flexibility and offer the ability to switch rapidly from one fabric formula to the next, without compromising on economical use of energy or raw materials.

Modules

The introduction of the latest Monforts multifunctional coating heads for the company’s industrial texCoat and Allround coating units offer a wide range of options, with modules available for:

• Screen printing — The coating head for rotary screen printing is suitable for woven, knitted and nonwoven fabrics, with the ability to apply single-color patterns and also achieve 3-D effects with low liquid penetration, for add-ons of between 10 and 100 grams per square meter (g/m2) and with coating formula viscosities of between 2,500 and 8,000 milliPascals (mPa). It also is highly suitable for patterning denim.
• Magnetic roller coating — With this coating head, low-penetration lacquering and pigment dyeing can be carried out, to add functional coatings to fabrics with add-ons of between 10 and 80 g/m2 and within the viscosity range of 1,000 to 6,000 mPa. Again, woven, knitted and nonwoven fabrics equally can be successfully treated.
• Knife coating — Is suitable for the one-sided application of foams to coated fabrics in order to seal against water, other liquids and gases; or alternatively for the addition of breathable coatings. Foam lamination and coatings for fashion items also can be applied using the knife method. Foam coating is particularly suitable for the production of highly effective blackout fabrics.

Two separate modules are available for knife coating:

• A knife system for coating viscosities of between 3,500 and 12,000 mPa and add-ons of between 10 and 150 g/m2. A coating speed of up to 50 meters per minute (m/min) is achievable with this head.
• A roller knife coating head for working with coating viscosities of between 3,000 and 35,000 mPa and a wide add-on range of between 20 and 1,500 g/m2. Depending on the material and coating, high speeds of up to 120 m/min are possible with this unit.

The texCoat module can be integrated into new lines or retrofitted into existing ones, while the Allround is a complete system designed to be integrated into a complete Monforts finishing range.

The acquisition of Austria-based Timatec and the integration of its range into the Monforts portfolio has further strengthened the company’s position in respect to coating technology.

The company is the only manufacturer that can offer completely integrated coating lines from a single source and the coating machine is tailored to the subsequent Monforts drying technology — with all the benefits resulting from a fully integrated programmable logic controller.

Monforts’ system has the shortest fabric path from the coating unit into the tenter and the company offers all variations of coating application systems as well. All of these options are available in wider widths, with the engineering and manufacturing from a single source in Europe.

Because of its company structure, former Timatec units were sold only in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Today, the company has new references in Turkey, Mexico, India, Pakistan and other markets.

Quick Changes

On the Allround, the modular coating heads can be quickly and easily changed via a specially-designed undercarriage from the side of the unit, allowing it to be readily adapted for different applications.

The Montex Allround consists of a load cell, a spreading unit and a pulling device along with the selected coating head. It allows for tension-free coating of the substrate along a greatly-reduced web path and a very short period of “open” coating prior to the substrate entering the dryer to ensure a significantly reduced chance of contamination. The shortest possible distance between the coating head and the tenter infeed ensures the highest quality coating results.

Further special modules for powder scattering and spraying also are available and the unit can be enclosed with a special casing to handle fabrics treated with organic, or even toxic, solvents.

Organic Solvents

There has been a wariness around handling organic solvents, but in the end, they’re not as difficult to coat on textile substrates as they are on plastic films where they already are widely used, and these solvents offer possibilities for companies to explore and develop entirely new products, especially in fields such as medical and filtration.

Nevertheless, they do require a highly-controlled and contained environment, and this was a key consideration when the technical textiles line available for trials at the Advanced Technology Centre (ATC) at Monforts’ headquarters was constructed.

The line incorporates a Montex 8000 four-chamber, horizontal chain tenter and is fitted with an explosion-proof coating application chamber.

Every single component within the chamber has to meet the standards of the European Union’s ATEX directives for working in an explosive atmosphere. A range of sensors linked to alarms operate at various levels within the chamber to ensure the specified lower explosion limit is never exceeded and the ventilation adapts accordingly.

Special features on the finishing line relate to a further advanced function — the ability to treat materials not only at temperatures of up to 320°C, but also to be able to treat the top and bottom faces of certain materials at different temperatures within a single pass through the machine.

To achieve this, the first two chambers of the tenter are fitted with special, heavy duty TwinAir ventilation motors and separate burners for individual top/bottom temperatures. A temperature differential of up to 60°C can be achieved between the upper and lower nozzles within the chamber.

There are many applications where employing two separate temperature treatments is beneficial, such as floorcoverings — where the textile face fabric is treated at one temperature and the rubber backing at another — as well as polyvinyl chloride flooring that employs chemical foams, or for materials like blackout roller blinds with heavy backings.

At the same time, in the pharmaceutical industry there is a wide range of different applications for organic solvents such as antiseptic treatments that have to be treated very carefully and applied at very specific temperatures in order not to destroy their efficacy.

Other materials, such as polytetrafluoroethylene-coated filter materials also are applied and then cured at separate temperatures.

Stretching

Another key feature of the technical textiles line at Monforts’ ATC is the special stretching device capable of pulling 10 tons in length and 10 tons in width — a huge amount per square meter of fabric and necessary in the production of materials such as woven or 3-D knits for high-temperature filter media.

Three weft straighteners — each with different key strengths — have been installed by Monforts’ ATC partners Erhardt + Leimer GmbH, Mahlo GmbH & Co. KG and Pleva GmbH, all based in Germany.

This line has been engineered to provide the ultimate in precision coating finishing in order to achieve the standards required by the medical industry, and also the quality standards in place for aerospace- and automotive-grade materials.

Eco Applicator

For conventional woven and knitted fabrics, the Monforts Eco Applicator as an alternative to the traditional on-wet padder has been highly successful since its introduction in 2011 — both integrated into new finishing lines and retro-fitted to existing ones.

In many textile mills globally, the cost of running integrated manufacturing lines — especially those for fabric finishing that can involve numerous sequences of heating and subsequent drying — is now eclipsing the cost of paying people to operate them.

The ability of the Eco Applicator to significantly reduce energy costs is the key reason for its rapid acceptance on the market.

The soft coating unit eliminates the need for a padder, instead employing trough and roller techniques to apply the required amount of liquid or coating to the fabric.

The unit itself does not actually save the energy, but by applying only the precise amount of functional finish, the subsequent drying time is shorter, and in some cases dramatically so.

Some Monforts customers have reported success stories of cycles that previously took an average of 160 minutes that have been reduced to just 40 minutes. Obviously, reducing the full processing time to a quarter of what it was has a significant impact on the electricity, steam and gas that is consumed.

The technology has been widely proven on woven and denim fabrics, and major knitting manufacturers now also are reaping the benefits the Eco Applicator provides.

Knitted fabrics must never be stretched and needs to be treated in a relaxed state. This is why the Montex tenter dryer with vertical chain return incorporates a TwinAir nozzle system that ensures the relaxed fabric is kept at a suitable height in between the upper and lower nozzle system, allowing for the fabric’s bowing, since it cannot be stretched.

Similarly, the Eco Applicator for knits is fitted with an advanced guidance system specially adapted to the needs of delicate treatments eliminating any possible curling of the fabric edges prior to entering the tenter.

Compared with a padder system, where the initial moisture content of the fabric entering the tenter is 60 percent, the Eco Applicator reduces moisture content to 40 percent. The system also has the shortest fabric path from the coating unit into the tenter.

The Eco Applicator’s versatility also allows mills to apply finishes to just one side of the fabric, or both; and even to apply separate finishes to each side, or to specific areas of a fabric, creating endless possibilities, whether treating wovens, denim or delicate knits.

Complete Control

The instant connectivity and easy distribution of know-how is changing the face of industrial manufacturing, making the operation of complex machinery much simpler and cutting down the required training periods. At the same time, the chance of human error is reduced.

This is certainly the case with Monforts’ latest Qualitex 800 control system, which is available for the automatic and continuous operation of Montex tenters; Thermex and E-Control continuous dyeing ranges; Monfortex and Toptex shrinking systems; and Eco Applicator, texCoat and Allround coating units.

The Qualitex 800 has all the intuitive features operators will be familiar with from touchscreen smart phones and tablets to make navigation extremely easy and cut down the time required to become familiar with the system.

Operation is via touchscreen and wheel-effect selection, and the dashboard can be individually configured to meet the exact needs of an operator’s tasks.

All parameters for setting up a machine — working width, chamber temperatures, drive selections and energy settings — can be preselected to a comprehensive range of stored and well-proven recipes specific to the weight, construction and fiber content of the individual fabric being processed. The machine can then be set to “Monformatic Mode” to allow it to operate automatically, based on maximized preset values in respect to parameters such as machine speed, fabric dwell time and the fixation temperature for specific finishing operations.

A series of checks and balances has been built in for both the machine and the operator, with actual performance constantly compared to the preset values and compensatory measures introduced either automatically or by simple manual intervention. All machine parameters are stored for further evaluation and the creation of historic trend charts, and any potential problems are flagged by instant alarms for later performance analysis.

Further assistance is available via the Monforts Teleservice portal, including internet conferences with Monforts specialists in Germany and video and audio problem solving. All documentation in respect to operation, maintenance and wiring diagrams can be accessed. If necessary, the E-CAD drawings and spare parts catalogue also can be remotely consulted, and a camera can be called up at any time for remote visualization of the individual machine and its parts.

Everything is in place to help the customer maximize productivity.

March/April 2018

Big data, IoT, the platform economy and artificial intelligence promise the most profound change fashion has undergone since the dawn of large-scale manufacturing

TW Special Report

The future has arrived and the present is not so easy. Fashion is becoming a difficult business to monitor. Its regional and global markets are both hypercompetitive and ever evolving, so that brands, retailers and manufacturers are forced to make rapid-fire decisions to remain in the game. Documentation, systematization and accountability often are afterthoughts as companies rush to deliver collections from one season to the next.

While China and India’s domestic fashion markets are becoming increasingly dominant, the offshoring paradigm still stands. Nowadays, despite a burgeoning trend towards proximity sourcing, very few products are being manufactured where they were developed.

According to Jason Adams, president, Smyrna, Ga.-based Lectra North America, factors such as language barriers, time zone differences and sheer geographical distance still limit communication between offices where product orders are placed and factories where they materialize. Lectra has a broad vision of the world as a provider of integrated technology solutions dedicated to industries using fabrics, leather, technical textiles and composite materials, and has been operating in the United States for more than 40 years.

For Adams, a lot is happening in fashion, but in a way that is too fast, too informal, and too far removed from headquarters to be visible in the traditional sense to the naked eye.

However, as brand audiences, overseas offices and supply chain partners grow further apart in the physical sense, ironically they have never been closer in digital terms.

Soon a majority of products could be digitally conceived, designed and transferred to other departments for further technical development. “From there, they will be assembled, worked on digitally by connected supply chain partners or in more advanced supply chains, manufactured by industrial robots that receive instructions sans human intervention,” Adams said. Then the products will be electronically sent, tracked, distributed, and marketed to digitally connected consumers.

Fashion now is rapidly becoming a predominantly digital industry, one where huge volumes of data, digital collaboration, online social interaction, digital marketing, and e-commerce come together to create and sell a physical product to a digital native demographic. As vital as the final product itself is, and will remain, the very near future of the industry will place a huge importance on the significant portion of its life that it spends in the digital domain.

While a shift in the production process might seem like a relatively small and manageable change in the way brands and retailers do business, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Together, the four main pillars of digitization — big data, the Internet of Things (IoT), the platform economy and artificial intelligence — promise what may prove the most profound change fashion has undergone since the dawn of large-scale manufacturing.

Millennials And Generation Z

Adams said supply chain digitization helps companies make significant profits and productivity gains through improved organization and production agility. This practice also enables them to achieve efficiency savings and hence meet customer expectations while enhancing business processes in other areas.

Today’s target shoppers, the famous millennials and Generation Z — whose exacting requirements and revolutionary buying behavior have left traditional retailers reeling — expect transparency.

Although price is still a major factor in their purchasing decisions, Adams noted, these conscientious consumers pay equal attention to product provenance. Brands and retailers who invest in obtaining this level of insight will be able to build and advertise codes of conduct for social compliance and sustainability, confident that there are no blind spots in their design, development and manufacturing processes.

While micro and macro trends vary from one market to another, however, deeper shifts in the competitive landscape and in consumer expectations brought about by digitization will, sooner rather than later, require retailers, brands and manufacturers to embrace the idea of fashion as a digital domain. However, what will this mean in practice?

Best Practices, Hardware Management

According to Limuel Sagadraca, vice president of Professional Services at Lectra, there are two key elements when it comes to ensuring a successful digitization process — best practices in software and in hardware management. Best software practices consist of collecting and analyzing large volumes of data to deliver actionable intelligence, opening channels of communication and collaboration between teams, and coordinating, optimizing, and automating new and existing processes throughout the product lifecycle. At the level of solutions, this might mean integrating the flow of data between supply chain management, product lifecycle management (PLM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, then analyzing this end-to-end sea of information in order to gather reliable insights for the business. For example, a large consumer packaged goods business in Europe recently began to perform analysis on its growing pool of big data covering both customers and operations, which now is powering a dynamic trend-forecasting model that has had a measurable impact on inventory turnover.

Taking this further, trend forecasting agencies now are going digital themselves, employing sophisticated deep-learning techniques to derive insights from volumes of images and other data sets that are prohibitively large or complex for humans to analyze. Crucially, e-commerce leaders already are using these cloud-based digital services and improving turnover. On the hardware front, factories that have undergone digitization will be using a combination of automation, machine-to-machine digital communication, and perhaps even 3-D printing and on-demand production. From cutters to spreaders to plotters, their machines will be able to communicate with one another. They also will be connected to monitoring and control systems and will feed data such as material consumption, cutting status, temperature and performance to a suite of solutions designed to turn this stream of information into usable intelligence.

This digitization of manufacturing is widely referred to as Industry 4.0 — the fourth overhaul of manufacturing, after lean, outsourcing and automation. In other regions, it has been dubbed smart manufacturing. While this sounds complex — justifiably so, given its scope — the essence of this fourth industrial revolution on the factory floor also can be understood in a much simpler manner. Digitizing the manufacturing process essentially means eliminating a longstanding and now unnecessary manual disconnect between products designed and developed in digital CAD, patternmaking and grading solutions then manufactured by digitally controlled machinery or robots.

Algorithms

For Sagadraca there is no single roadmap to digitization. With an almost limitless range of software, hardware and services that can theoretically be linked to form a cohesive digital workflow, the direction each business takes will be dictated by its goals and challenges. Seeking shorter lead times, some brands will embrace virtual prototyping and 3-D printing. Looking to exceed customer expectations across channels, other brands will come to rely on machine learning, applying algorithms to real-time information feeds from all of their retail channels to serve up pitch-perfect product recommendations. Aiming to improve material utilization and cut costs, yet others will connect their cutting machines to an intuitive software layer that delivers minute-to-minute technical insights to design and development teams.

Sagadraca goes on to stress that each digitization strategy is unique but they all have one thing in common — the need for a single platform to oversee, optimize and manage the newly formed digital workflows. As more software solutions, platforms and physical hardware — including products themselves, thanks to small embedded systems — become connected, the need to consolidate, manage and analyze data in a centralized location will become more acute, at the same time as the potential benefits of digitization become even more compelling. PLM has already emerged as the most capable tool for this challenge.

PLM In Fashion

Businesses should remember that not all PLM solutions are created equal. For Lectra PLM Business Consultant Karyn Wangenstein some solutions were conceived for smaller creative tasks; others were repurposed from different industries. Companies hoping to keep a podium position in the digital race and to manage the complexity of connecting potentially hundreds of different tools and technologies, should, if possible, select a solution specifically designed for the IoT and Industry 4.0, rather than settling for software that has been retrofitted to cope with a changed world.

For Wangenstein, an ideal PLM solution should have a wide functional scope that covers the entire design-to-production process. By connecting all supply chain actors, external suppliers and industry processes together, the solution helps companies fully embrace Industry 4.0, bridging the gap between the final consumer and the manufacturer. It should also have the ability to interface quickly with all other tools and IT systems such as CAD, ERP and customer relationship management (CRM), in order to ensure a continuous flow of data to help the company transition smoothly to the new digital era.

Digital Transformation

It is therefore important to recognize that digitization is likely to be an exponential journey for many businesses. The more technologies and processes they digitize, the more potential avenues for digitization present themselves under the umbrella of PLM. With this in mind, it is vital that prospective customers select a platform that is scalable. When it comes to defining the bigger picture and setting an end goal for digitization, many industries and commentators have latched onto the term “digital transformation.” That term was avoided here, because it implies a total, immediate transition when in reality digitization is an objective that can and should be achieved in increments.

Adams concludes brands, retailers, and manufacturers wishing to make the most of their move to the digital domain should borrow from the templates set by digital leaders or forge their own path, using their own unique digital drivers to define specific use cases that will deliver value today and lay the foundations for more comprehensive change tomorrow. Businesses that commit to digitization today will almost invariably reveal new insights about not just their customers, but their own internal attitudes and business models as well.

Companies that have already begun the process are showing their commitment to keeping pace with customer expectations. They, and the retailers and brands who join them today, will best be positioned to secure their place in fashion’s future as a digital domain.

March/April 2018