ATLANTA — December 19, 2017 — Smith, Gambrell & Russell LLP (SGR) is pleased to announce the firm served as legal counsel to Patrick Yarn Mill Inc., a manufacturer of high performance industrial yarns, in its acquisition by Coats Group PLC, an industrial thread manufacturer. Benefitting from Coats’ strong corporate brand and global footprint, the acquisition creates market growth opportunities for Patrick Yarns while enhancing Coats’ capabilities in the engineered textile industry.
Based in North Carolina, Patrick Yarns uses innovative technology and “green” processes such as solar installation along with recycled earth-friendly materials, including its EarthSpun® yarns to produce quality textile solutions for its clients. Since its founding in 1963, the engineered yarn manufacturer has successfully delivered flexible, cutting edge textile applications which exceed the ever-changing needs of the market. With its synergies in product offerings and technological innovation coupled with its recent strategic acquisitions, England-based Coats is a natural complement to Patrick Yarns.
The SGR Atlanta legal team included John C. Ethridge, Jr., Nicholas Rueter, and Nicholas Flint in the Mergers & Acquisitions Practice.
TREVOSE, Pa. — December 18, 2017 — Alphabroder, the North American distributor of imprintable sportswear and accessories and portfolio company Littlejohn & Co. LLC, closed its acquisition of Prime Line, a manufacturer and supplier of promotional products for more than three decades.
Since its founding in 1980, Prime Line has introduced many innovative products and services and today offers more than 1700 products across 16 categories. It features exclusive brands such as MopToppers™, Leeman New York, Rubik’s® and BUILT® as well as numerous product collections. In 2016, it acquired Jetline, which was rebranded as Prime Line’s value line. Source Abroad by Prime is the company’s custom and overseas sourcing division offering fully custom products as well as fast turn import items. A founding member of QCA, Prime Line has an industry leading focus on product safety and regulatory compliance. The company will remain headquartered in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
“I have long known and respected Prime Line and its family leadership. This is a significant acquisition and the combination of our companies will create the industry’s first true ‘one-stop-shop’ offering our customers a new level of convenience, service and solutions,” said Norman Hullinger, CEO, alphabroder.
“We strongly believe in the evolving mission of alphabroder as a value added distributor of a complete assortment of imprintable products, both soft, and now hard goods,” said Drew Greenwood, principal of Littlejohn & Co. “With hard goods being a larger market that is even more fragmented than apparel, alphabroder is well positioned to continue growing both organically and through additional acquisitions,” added David Simon, managing director of Littlejohn & Co.
Prime Line is alphabroder’s third strategic acquisition in recent years having added Bodek and Rhodes in 2015 and Ash City in 2014, each of which were leading manufacturers and distributors of promotional apparel in North America.
Jeff Lederer, along with the Prime Line management team, will join the alphabroder management team and continue to operate Prime Line.
OSNABRÜCK, Germany — December 2017 —Two companies — the Felix Schoeller Group and DATAPLOT GmbH — have agreed on a strategic partnership that combines the strengths of the two partners. With immediate effect, Felix Schoeller Digital Media’s STYLine® brand — digitally printable nonwoven wallpaper — will be marketed in 40 countries throughout Europe by DATAPLOT and its sales network. Conversely, the Felix Schoeller Group will take care of the development and production side of things, and manufacture both partners’ non-woven wallpapers that have been specially developed for digital printing. Customers can now choose between two strong brands: DATAPLOT’s EMBLEM based on Felix Schoeller brand and Felix Schoeller Digital Media’s STYLine®. Both brands have been certified by HP Latex and Xeikon, which guarantees their outstanding quality of conversion on those systems.
Fast service in 40 countries guaranteed
“We are very pleased about the collaboration with DATAPLOT,” said Florian vom Bruch, general manager, Felix Schoeller Digital Media. “It will enable us to offer our customers even better service around all aspects of our STYLine®-wallpaper. DATAPLOT has a high degree of expertise in slitting and marketing digitally printable nonwoven wallpapers. And their direct contact to specialist retailers and the advertising and printing industry in over 40 countries is another advantage we will benefit from.”
As well selling the products, DATAPLOT will also be responsible for slitting and logistics. DATAPLOT will also ensure that customers receive competent support in all aspects of converting the products. Schoeller will provide the necessary product quality and expertise.
“Felix Schoeller Digital Media offers the very highest quality products, from development through to production,” said Karsten Werther, CEO of DATAPLOT GmbH. “This expertise is an excellent fit for EMBLEM. That is why we see this partnership as the ideal way of complementing our competencies and ensuring that we continue to offer our distributors and partners nothing less than the very best quality.”
Standard rolls are available in widths of 75 centimeters (cm) and 155 cm and, with run lengths of 55 meters to 75 meters, they are optimally suited to the needs of the market. Special widths and lengths are also available on request. Customers who would like to see the quality of these non-woven products for themselves are welcome to request sample rolls at info@dataplot.de or get in touch with their key contact partners at Felix Schoeller Digital Media.
Felix Schoeller and DATAPLOT experts will be at Heimtextil 2018 working together to answer questions about digital printable non-woven wallpaper. The Felix Schoeller Group will be showcasing its STYLine® wallpaper in all its different facets at Stand F51, Hall 3.1.
MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. — December 3, 2017 — Chris Nolan of Nolan.UDA Pty. Ltd. and Barry Jamieson of Polyfab Australia Pty. Ltd. have announced the acquisition of Polyfab Australia by the Nolan Group. Barry Jamieson is one of the originators of developing heavy duty knitted HDPE shadecloth for the protection of people from the damaging rays of the sun more than 25 years ago, and had established Polyfab Australia, Polyfab Middle East and Polyfab USA (Polyfab Middle East and Polyfab USA were spun off a few years ago as separate companies). Barry will continue to play an active role in management of Polyfab Australia.
The Nolan Group
The Nolan Group is one of Australia’s largest suppliers of commercial & industrial textiles, with six branches strategically located in capital cities throughout Australia. They have a rich history dating back to 1881 and pride themselves on operating in adherence to their core business principles of integrity, innovation and value for money. Over these years, the Nolan Group has established a solid and reputable network of trading partners from around the world, providing them with a comprehensive portfolio of products. Each product has been put through rigorous testing to ensure performance, longevity and customer satisfaction. “I am sure some of these products will find their way into the USA market, through our new strategic partnership with Polyfab USA”, according to Chris Nolan, Managing Director of Nolan Group. “Initially we will be concentrating on shadecloth and related products, providing additional technical and marketing support to the USA team”.
Product Line
All Polyfab-brand shadecloth is 100% recyclable, lead and phthalate free.
POLYTEX® — A 7 oz. per square yard superior fire rated knitted HDPE shade fabric designed for use in modular shade structures and shade sails. Recommended for residential and small commercial installations with unsupported spans of 25 feet or less. Available in 19 colors and meets the FR specifications of NFPA-701 and ASTM E-84.
COMTEX® — A 10 oz. per square yard superior fire rated knitted HDPE shade fabric designed for large tension membrane structures and architectural shade sails. Recommended for larger commercial installations or any job if preferred. Available in 17 colors and meets the FR specifications of NFPA-701 and ASTM E-84.
ARCHITEC 400® — A 12 oz. per square yard premium extra heavy duty knitted HDPE shade fabric designed for larger tension membrane structures and architectural shade sails. Shades using this fabric should be well designed and engineered to hold the fabric under the tension it deserves. Available in 12 colors and meets the FR specifications of ASTM E-84.
FR COMSHADE® — A 8.25 oz. per square yard premium fire rated knitted HDPE shade fabric with a next generation FR additive, registered with the California State Fire Marshal #F-59002.
COMSHADE XTRA — A 12 oz. per square yard premium extra heavy duty knitted HDPE shadecloth designed for larger tension membrane structures and architectural shade sails, which significantly exceeds other shade fabric on the market for UV protection and strength to weight ratio. Available in 10 designer colors.
POLYFAB PRO™ SHADE SAIL HARDWARE — A full line of professional-grade stainless steel and other metal fittings for fabricating and installing shade sails, used by fabricators in Australia and the Americas for the finest look of their finished shade products.
OBERTSHAUSEN, Germany — December 6, 2017 — KARL MAYER founded a new enterprise on November 3, 2017. The company’s name is KARL MAYER Digital Factory GmbH with registered office in Frankfurt/Main. For Karl Mayer digitization is an important success factor.
With this new business, the Karl Mayer Group wants to build up further-reaching digital competences with an agile environment. Main aim is a fast and flexible development of new digital solutions, offering perceptible added value for the customers. The targeted business models, products and services — as part of Karl Mayer’s digitization strategy — are meant to support the clients in their markets. “In the digital world, too, only those offers are successful which can best satisfy the consumer demands,” said Antonia Gottschalk, head of digitization, Karl Mayer, and managing director, Karl Mayer Digital Factory. “This is the reason why we consistently focus on customer benefits, and combine our long-standing experience as leading textile machinery manufacturer with new, digital know-how.”
Besides, the new company’s capacities are intended to complement the ongoing and planned activities in Karl Mayer’s core organization.
KELHEIM, Germany — December 18, 2017 — With the newly developed viscose fiber speciality Danufil® QR, Kelheim Fibres has mastered a challenge in the area of disinfection wipes. So far, the use of viscose fibers in these antiseptic wipes has posed a significant problem in spite of their excellent fluid handling properties: the fibers bind certain disinfectant substances which severely interferes with the wipes’ function.
The active substances are quaternary ammonium compounds. These so-called “quats” are positively charged. Standard viscose fibers are negatively charged which is why up to 80 percent of the quats are tightly bound to the fiber — meaning they are no longer available for their actual purpose.
With the viscose speciality Danufil QR, Kelheim has developed a positively charged viscose fiber that can reduce this undesired effect to less than 10 percent. As a result, by far the largest proportion of the quats is available for effective cleaning.
Danufil QR receives its functionality through the incorporation of a completely bio-degradable additive into the fiber’s core. Therefore, the functionality is evenly distributed and cannot migrate from the material.
While viscose fibers are long established raw materials for other hygiene, medical or food applications, Danufil QR offers all the well-known benefits of viscose fibers such as absorbency, softness and skin- friendliness for disinfectant wipes.
Kelheim’s viscose fibers also score high points for eco-friendliness, particularly in convenient disposable products: Danufil QR is made of 100-percent renewable raw materials. The cellulose used for these fibers comes exclusively from FSC- or PEFC-certified sources.
In addition to this, Danufil QR has successfully taken its first steps in practice. Sample quantities for tests are immediately available.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — December 15, 2017 — The Angelica linen, uniform and facility services chain’s laundries in Orange and Sacramento, Calif., and Pawtucket, R.I., are the organization’s latest recipients of Hygienically Clean (HC) Healthcare certification. This designation reflects their commitment to best management practices (BMPs) in laundering as verified by on-site inspection and their capability to produce hygienically clean textiles as quantified by ongoing microbial testing.
The certification confirms Angelica’s dedication to infection prevention, compliance with recognized industry standards and processing healthcare textiles using BMPs as described in its quality assurance documentation, a focal point for Hygienically Clean inspectors’ evaluation. The independent, third-party inspection must also confirm essential evidence that:
Employees are properly trained and protected;
Managers understand regulatory requirements;
OSHA-compliant; and
Physical plant operates effectively.
Angelica now has 21 TRSA Hygienically Clean Healthcare certified facilities, the most of any laundry chain in the United States. In addition to the three newest designees, Angelica has secured the certification at facilities in Phoenix, Ariz.; Colton, Fresno, Pittsburg and San Fernando, Calif.; Holly Hill and Safety Harbor, Fla.; Rockmart, Ga.; Chicago, Ill.; Worcester, Mass.; Durham, N.C.; Henderson, Nev.; Batavia, N.Y.; Lorain, Ohio; Columbia, S.C.; Memphis and Ooltewah, Tenn.; and Austin, Texas. Angelica is in the process of certifying all of its laundries.
Certified facilities pass three rounds of outcome-based microbial testing, indicating that their processes are producing Hygienically Clean Healthcare textiles and zero presence of yeast, mold and harmful bacteria. To maintain their certification, laundry plants must pass quarterly testing to ensure that as laundry conditions change, such as water quality, textile fabric composition and wash chemistry, laundered product quality is consistently maintained.
This process eliminates subjectivity by focusing on outcomes and results that verify textiles cleaned in these facilities meet appropriate hygienically clean standards and BMPs for hospitals, surgery centers, medical offices, nursing homes and other medical facilities.
Hygienically Clean Healthcare certification acknowledges laundries’ effectiveness in protecting healthcare operations through testing and inspections that scrutinize quality control procedures in textile services operations related to the handling of textiles containing blood and other potentially infectious materials.
Certified laundries use processes, chemicals and BMPs acknowledged by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation, American National Standards Institute and others. Introduced in 2012, Hygienically Clean Healthcare brought to North America the international cleanliness standards for healthcare linens and garments used worldwide by the Certification Association for Professional Textile Services and the European Committee for Standardization.
Objective experts in epidemiology, infection control, nursing and other healthcare professions work with Hygienically Clean launderers to ensure the certification continues to enforce the highest standards for producing clean healthcare textiles.
“Congratulations to Angelica on their certifications,” said Joseph Ricci, TRSA president and CEO. “This achievement proves their ongoing commitment to infection prevention and that their laundry facilities take every step possible to prevent human illness.”
HOUSTON — December 6, 2017 — The introduction of purified carbon nanotubes appears to have a beneficial effect on the early growth of wheatgrass, according to Rice University scientists. But in the presence of contaminants, those same nanotubes could do great harm.
The Rice lab of chemist Andrew Barron grew wheatgrass in a hydroponic garden to test the potential toxicity of nanoparticles on the plant. To their surprise, they found one type of particle dispersed in water helped the plant grow bigger and faster.
Purified single-walled carbon nanotubes dispersed in water promoted greater plant growth (center) than the nanomaterial-free control (left) after eight days of an experiment at Rice University. Feeding plants tetrahydrofuran with the nanotubes (right) produced the opposite effect, stunting plant growth. Photos by Seung Mook Lee
They suspect the results spring from nanotubes’ natural hydrophobic (water-avoiding) nature that in one experiment apparently facilitated the plants’ enhanced uptake of water.
The research appears in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Environmental Science: Nano.
The lab mounted the small-scale study with the knowledge that the industrial production of nanotubes will inevitably lead to their wider dispersal in the environment. The study cited rapid growth in the market for nanoparticles in drugs, cosmetic, fabrics, water filters and military weapons, with thousands of tons produced annually.
Despite their widespread use, Barron said few researchers have looked at the impact of environmental nanoparticles — whether natural or man-made — on plant growth.
The researchers planted wheatgrass seeds in multiple replicates in cotton wool and fed them with dispersions that contained raw single-walled or multi-walled nanotubes, purified single-walled nanotubes or iron oxide nanoparticles that mimicked leftover catalyst often attached to nanotubes. The solutions were either water or tetrahydrofuran (THF), an industrial solvent. Some of the seeds were fed pure water or THF as a control.
Rice University researchers tested the effects of carbon nanotubes on the growth of wheatgrass. While some showed no effect, purified single-walled nanotubes in water (5) enhanced the plants’ growth, while the same nanotubes in a solvent (6) retarded their development. The photos show the plants after four days and at right after eight days, with odd-numbered plants growing in water and evens in a solvent. Numbers 1 and 2 are controls without nanotubes; 3-4 contain raw single-walled tubes; 5-6 purified single-walled tubes; 7-8 raw multi-walled tubes; 9-10 low-concentration iron-oxide nanoparticles and 11-12 high-concentration iron-oxide nanoparticles. Click on the image for a larger version. Photos by Seung Mook Lee
After eight days, the plantings showed that purified single-walled nanotubes in water enhanced the germination rate and shoot growth of wheatgrass, which grew an average of 13 percent larger than plants in plain water. Raw single- and multi-walled nanotubes and particles in either solution had little effect on the plants’ growth, they found.
However, purified single-walled nanotubes in THF retarded plant development by 45 percent compared to single-walled nanotubes in water, suggesting the nanotubes act as a carrier for the toxic substance.
The concern, Barron said, is that if single-walled nanotubes combine with organic pollutants like pesticides, industrial chemicals or solvents in the environment, they may concentrate and immobilize the toxins and enhance their uptake by plants.
Nothing seen in the limited study indicated whether carbon nanotubes in the environment, and potentially in plants, will rise up the food chain and be harmful to humans, he said.
On the other hand, the researchers said it may be worth looking at whether hydrophobic substrates that mimic the positive effects observed in single-walled nanotubes could be used for high-efficiency channeling of water to seeds.
“Our work confirms the importance of thinking of nanomaterials as part of a system rather in isolation,” Barron said. “It is the combination with other compounds that is important to understand.”
Seung Mook Lee, a former visiting student research assistant from Memorial High School in Houston and now an undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, is lead author of the paper. Co-authors are Rice research scientist Pavan Raja and graduate student Gibran Esquenazi. Barron is the Charles W. Duncan Jr.–Welch Professor of Chemistry and a professor of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice and the Sêr Cymru Chair of Low Carbon Energy and Environment at Swansea University, Wales (UK).
The Welsh Government Sêr Cymru Program and the Robert A. Welch Foundation supported the research.
Posted December 15, 2017
Source: Rice University’s Office of Public Affairs
HORGEN, Switzerland — December 15, 2017 — SSM showed two new product launches for the first time at the ShanghaiTex 2017. The PWX-CTM, for cone-to-muff, and the PWX-MTC, for muff-to-cone winding, generated large interest. SSM was very pleased by the high response on their shared booths.
This year’s show attracted a large number of visitors. Switzerland-based SSM Schärer Schweiter Mettler AG, the inventor of the electronic yarn traverse system, was present on the booth of their agent Union Trading as well as on the booth of Rieter Components. Two machines for the dye package/rewinding process of high elastic yarns had been exhibited successfully.
The best solution to maintain a high residual elasticity of elastic Polyamide (PA) and Polyester (PES) Draw Textured Yarns (DTY) after dyeing is the muff dyeing process with integrated SSM leading yarn winding technology. The new SSM PWX-CTM enables the preparation of low-density muffs, while maintaining the highest possible elasticity of the yarn throughout the dyeing process. For the highest flexible and productive rewinding, SSM PWX-MTC offers the proper solution — regardless whether muffs, hanks, dye packages on dye tubes or coreless dye packages are to be rewound.
Besides the displayed applications, SSM provides a wide range of renowned textile machines.
TOLLAND, Conn. — December 14, 2017 — Data entry has long been a laborious job and with many company’s legacy systems required multiple entries causing errors to arise. “Duplicate data entry will be something of the past once we employ YuniquePLM,” said Kelly Milazzo, vice president operations, Toad & Co. “Our team will realize reduced development time and eliminate time consuming errors throughout the product development process making our business more sustainable over time.”
Toad & Co. are creators of socially and environmentally committed garments that are equally suited for the rigors of the trail or the tavern. Ninety percent of their products are eco-friendly and a portion of each sale supports people with developmental disabilities.
“We are excited to help Toad & Co succeed with their mission of being sustainable,” stated Bill Brewster, vice president and general manager, enterprise software solutions at Gerber. “With the implementation of YuniquePLM Cloud, they are able to eliminate duplicate data entries and eliminate errors by housing all data in a central repository saving time as they produce their socially and environmentally friendly apparel.”
YuniquePLM Cloud product lifecycle management software serves as a central repository of critical data, and eliminates problems companies often face when using multiple Excel spreadsheets, email or tracking documents to communicate throughout the stages of product development and management. YuniquePLM Cloud creates a single version of the truth, connecting a company’s creative process with their supply chain and production processes.
