GCS To Build Plant In Louisiana

Gulf Coast Spinning Co. LLC (GCS), a new venture undertaken by the management group of Lacassine, La.-based Zagis USA LLC, will invest $130 million to build a cotton spinning facility in Bunkie, La. The investment will result in the creation of an estimated 290 jobs.

The facility is the second of two that Zagis USA announced in 2008 it would build in Louisiana. The first, which represented a $20 million investment, opened in Lacassine in late 2009. Together, the two mills are expected to generate 386 direct and 1,040 indirect jobs.

GCS expects to begin construction in mid-2014 on the 600,000-square-foot Bunkie facility comprising two operations — a ring-spinning operation equipped with 43,200 Zinser spindles that will be able to spin up to 450,000 pounds per week of premium cotton and cotton/synthetic carded and combed yarns for knit and woven apparel, and specialty denim yarns; and an open-end operation equipped with 17,280 rotors supplied by five blending lines and 52 cards, with a weekly capacity of up to 2.5 million pounds of cotton/synthetic and synthetic yarns.

The facility will be four times larger than Zagis USA’s Lacassine mill, which produces 100-percent cotton open-end yarns.

GCS plans to export most of its yarn, similarly to the Lacassine mill, which exports 85 percent of its spun yarn. Once the Bunkie mill is commissioned, the two mills together are expected to utilize some 15 to 20 percent of Louisiana’s total cotton crop.

January/February 2014

Crisco Announces Run For Congress

Keith Crisco, president and chairman of Asheboro Elastics Corp. (AEC), Asheboro, N.C., and a former North Carolina secretary of commerce serving under former Governor Beverly Perdue, is running for the U.S. Congress. Crisco, a Democrat, is challenging Republican incumbent Renee Ellmers of Dunn, N.C., for her seat in North Carolina’s Second Congressional District. Both candidates must first win their respective 2014 Congressional primaries, which will be held May 6.

“I am running for North Carolina’s 2nd Congressional District because I believe we need to return to sensitive bipartisan policies, reduce sky-high unemployment and improve educational opportunities for our children,” Crisco said.

AEC, founded in 1986, employs more than 160 people, has manufacturing plants in Asheboro, El Salvador and Honduras, and has annual sales of more than $18 million.

January/February 2014

Cooley Group: Diversified Company Reaches Out For Global Opportunities

Cooley Group is a worldwide leader in the development and manufacture of high-performance flexible and sustainable fabrics used in applications including water, fuel and chemical containment; military equipment; commercial roofing; and outdoor advertising. Established in 1926, it is based in Pawtucket, R.I., and has manufacturing facilities in three locations.

Daniel R. Dwight was appointed president, CEO and director of Cooley Group in March 2011. He has extensive executive global leadership experience in business development, manufacturing and operations, and technology commercialization, including 17 years with GE in the Americas, Asia and Europe.
 


Daniel R. Dwight, president and CEO, Cooley Group

Textile World: You’ve been on board at Cooley for about two years now. What attracted you to the company? What challenges have you faced?

Dwight: Cooley’s people and reputation attracted me to the company. Cooley is a manufacturing company that operates under the simple premise that people, not machines, make products. The belief that every employee can make a difference in delivering proven performance to our customers is what sets Cooley apart from our competitors.  

For example, when Cooley was developing the stadium wrap for the 2012 London Olympic Stadium, our machine operators, R&D technicians and sales team were working together on the factory floor collectively with our collaborative partner, Dow Chemical, to drive development and production of the best possible customer solution. Our challenge with the stadium was that it was built to be taken apart after the Olympic Games were through. We had to hide the inside structure. We ended up developing 25-meter-high by 2-meter-wide banners to cover all the beams and supports that had been visible on the inside walls of the stadium. It took more than 335 banners. The result of this collective effort was a world-class product solution that exceeded our customer’s performance expectation.  

The strength of the Cooley brand globally continues to amaze me. I spend a significant portion of my time traveling the globe meeting with Cooley customers to assess our strengths and weaknesses while looking to identify new market opportunities. Almost everyone I meet is intimately familiar with Cooley’s reputation as a company that delivers proven performance.

As president and CEO, I face the challenge of harnessing the strength of our team, our global reputation for proven performance and innovation, and our collaborative partnerships into a comprehensive strategy for accelerated growth.
 
TW: At the recent IFAI Specialty Fabrics Show in Orlando, the consensus of a number of exhibitors seemed to be that there is a lack of industry momentum right now. Do you agree?

Dwight: As a highly diversified, global company, we are operating with a ton of momentum right now. This momentum is enhanced by our level of innovation. With 40 percent of our revenue annually from new products, we are focused on developing innovative, new solutions for our global customers. Our innovation is a direct function of the strength of our people and their commitment to our customers. Product development is not the sole responsibility of R&D, but a company-wide responsibility that involves every employee.

Water containment, for example, is a very strong opportunity market for us. Limited clean water hampers growth in developing nations. Containment and separation play to the strengths of our products for geosynthetics, desalination and hazardous containment applications.


Cooley recently completed a fuel storage project in Siberia.

 
TW: Cooley seems to be involved in a number of very distinct market segments. Which are the major markets and about what percentage does each represent?  

Dwight: Cooley has three core businesses: Building Products, Commercial Graphics and Engineered Membranes. Building Products services principally the commercial roofing market, although this past year, our Building Products team entered the recreational vehicle and mobile storage market with a highly innovative new product solution that has been very well received. Our Commercial Graphics team services the out-of-home advertising, signage and awning markets. Our recently launched 100- percent recyclable, polyethylene (PE) print media material has been getting rave reviews from our North and South American and European customers. Our Engineered Membranes team services a highly diversified mix of markets. The team continues to accelerate not only its new product offerings but also its geographic expansion, particularly into Russia, Turkey and Eastern Europe.

TW: Give us some examples of international projects.

Dwight: We just completed a huge fuel storage project in Siberia and have applied our leading oil boom containment membrane for prophylactic protection of a desalination facility in Dubai. We recently signed an agreement with Hewlett-Packard to be their global print media supplier for their latex line of commercial printers — which complements our opening of a new office in Germany to support our Europe, Middle East and North African expansions.
 
TW: In your military market involvement, have you seen a decrease due to budget cuts? If so, how do you plan to make up for the lost business?

Dwight: Our military business continues to grow, which is great news not just because of the budget cuts but because we exited one of our larger military markets in 2012 — the military tent market could not meet our profitability objective. Specific military products include material for military raiding craft and chemical containment businesses.  
 
TW: Company literature says more than 40 percent of Cooley’s annual revenue comes from new products. Can you elaborate on this?

Dwight: Cooley gets 40 percent of our revenue from new products not only because we are highly innovative but also because we are not afraid to cannibalize our own successful products in search of better solutions for our customers. For example, we drove the billboard market from 12-ounce (oz) polyvinyl chloride (PVC) to 7-oz PVC; we are now driving the market to our newest product offering, 4.2-oz PE.  We entered the natural gas fracking market in 2013 with a highly innovative geomembrane polyurethane product solution for the storage of the water and chemicals used in this highly liquid-intensive process.  Our new recreational vehicle roofing product offers the RV manufacturer a roofing solution that is easier to install while offering better performance.  
 
TW: What specific issues or market drivers influence Cooley’s prosperity?

Dwight: As a company that distributes its products in over 50 countries on six continents, we have benefited and continue to benefit from free trade agreements. We also benefit from the broader global demand for international product performance standards. For example, we are winning more and more international commercial roofing business because of the growing demand for Factory Mutual (FM) rated quality standards for building materials among building owners and operators in places like China, Turkey and the Middle East. For the same reason Toyota is purchasing our roofing solutions for its U.S. manufacturing facilities, Toyota is also purchasing Cooley solutions for its production facility in Turkey — and that reason is Cooley’s proven performance.

TW: Tell us about your management team.

Dwight: The Cooley leadership team is as diverse as the products we offer and markets we serve. P. Robert Siener Jr., our chairman, just celebrated 65 years with the company and continues to be the emotional driver behind innovation at Cooley, the champion of everything “new, new, new.” Our diversity is exemplified in our two core divisional business leaders, who both bring worldwide sales leadership to Cooley but come from widely diverse backgrounds: David Lunati, business leader for our Engineered Membranes and Building Products businesses, has a degree from Harvard; while Bryan Rose, business leader for our Commercial Graphics business, was educated on the floor of a Cooley warehouse where he started his career over 25 years ago. David Pettey, our COO, has a Ph.D. along with decades of textile and extrusion operating experience. Ron Markovsky, our CFO, has decades of finance and controllership experience with a diverse group of mid-market-size companies.
 

Editor’s note: Stephen M. Warner, Arden Hills, Minn., is publisher of BeaverLake6 Report, beaverlake6.com, a Web-based newsletter reporting on trends, data and issues that he feels influence the technical textiles industry. He also is former president and CEO of Industrial Fabrics Association International.

January/February 2014

Cotton Made In Africa Continues Its Path Of Success

ACCRA/HAMBURG/HARARE/LUSAKA — February 13, 2014 — Nearly 70,000 smallholder farmers in Ghana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Côte d’Ivoire benefit from the Cotton made in Africa (CmiA) initiative’s program for the first time and are able to market CmiA-tested cotton. In this way, the initiative is further expanding its cooperation with smallholder families in Sub-Saharan Africa and making a significant contribution to improving their living conditions.

According to the Human Development Index of the United Nations, Ghana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Côte d’Ivoire are among the least developed countries in the world. In order to fully realize their potential, particular in the agricultural sector, CmiA focuses on sustainable and efficient cotton production. For the first time, the initiative is active in Ghana and cooperates with roughly 9,000 local smallholder farmers and the cotton company Olam. CmiA has already successfully contributed to improving the living conditions of smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Côte d’Ivoire. After successfully receiving CmiA standard certification, an additional 61,000 cotton farmers and the cotton companies Alliance in Zimbabwe and Zambia and Seco in Côte d’Ivoire are now initiative partners.

Through training programs, Cotton made in Africa teaches cotton farmers about modern, efficient, and environmentally friendly cultivation methods that help them improve the quality of their cotton, yield higher crops, and thus earn a better income.

Christoph Kaut, Managing Director of the Aid by Trade Foundation, is pleased about this latest milestone: “Not only the farmers but also their family members profit from the newly established cooperations with CmiA: In Ghana we are able to reach about 100,000 persons, in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Côte d’Ivoire roughly 486,000. This is a great success for all participants in the cotton growing regions of Sub-Saharan Africa and for our initiative.” In total, about 435,000 smallholder farmers and with their family members included more than 3.2 million people currently participate in the CmiA program.

Posted February 14, 2014

Source: Aid by Trade Foundation

Industry Invited To AATCC International Conference 2014

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — February 14, 2014 — With a pre-conference tutorial and presentations featuring industry leaders, plus opportunities to build or expand your professional network, the AATCC International Conference for 2014, is a “must attend.”

A major industry event, IC 2014, as it’s known, will be held in Asheville, NC, USA, from April 1-3 and feature educational tracks, a poster session, the Herman and Myrtle Goldstein Student Paper Competition, networking receptions, and the annual Awards Luncheon, where AATCC’s most prestigious honors will be presented.

Registrants and attendees can learn more before and during IC 2014 by following the event’s Twitter and Facebook Hashtag: #a2ic14

The education portion of the conference will include three tracks reflecting the Association’s Interest Groups: Concept 2 Consumer® (C2C), Chemical Applications, and Materials. Sessions in the C2C track will cover concept and design insights; a glimpse at what’s new—color, print and product development; supply chain  trends today and tomorrow; and consumer interests—product performance and innovation for the retail marketplace. The Chemical Applications track will address sustainability, coloration, advances in application technology, and also include the Herman and Myrtle Goldstein Student Paper Competition.  Presentations in the Materials track will include protective textiles, medical textiles, and innovative technologies.

The conference, which will be held at the Crowne Plaza Resort, is open to anyone who would like to attend.

Additional information and registration links are available on the AATCC website.

Posted February 14, 2014

Source: AATCC

National Spinning Co., Inc. Names Booterbaugh President

WASHINGTON, N.C. — February 10, 2014 — The Board of National Spinning Co., Inc. has unanimously elected James (Jim) Booterbaugh President of National Spinning Co., Inc., effective immediately. Booterbaugh succeeds James (Jim) Chesnutt, who will retain the titles of Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board.

In making the announcement, CEO James Chesnutt stated, “Jim has shown extraordinary talent and delivered strong results in his time with National Spinning. We could not have picked a candidate with a stronger track record of leadership, skill, and industry knowledge.” Chesnutt added, “Jim will help us continue to support our core businesses while responding to new opportunities and challenges.”

Booterbaugh, familiarly known to many as “Boot,” has been with National Spinning since 2004. His most recent position was Chief Operating Officer. Additionally, he serves as corporate Secretary.

Prior to joining National, Booterbaugh worked at Harriet & Henderson Yarns, The Institute of Textile Technology, and Milliken & Company. He holds a BS from Virginia Tech and an MS from the Institute of Textile Technology.

Booterbaugh is a former President and Chairman of the Southern Textile Association, and has served as advisory board member for the North Carolina Textile Technology Center. He currently sits as industry advisory board member for the TATM Department at North Carolina State University.

Booterbaugh resides in Chapel Hill, NC with wife Ann and son Grant. Their two daughters Maggie and Hayley attend university in North Carolina.


Booterbaugh

Posted February 14, 2014

Source: National Spinning

Dixie Group’s Masland Carpet, Desso Form JV

Chattanooga, Tenn.-based carpet and rug manufacturer The Dixie Group Inc. and the Netherlands-based carpet and carpet tile manufacturer Desso Holding BV have signed a non-binding letter of intent to form a joint venture (JV) in conjunction with Dixie Group’s Masland Contract division. Under the JV, the companies would offer a complete floorcovering selection for the U.S. hospitality market as well as for international distribution.
 
In addition, the two companies have signed a conditional agreement under which Dixie Group will be the exclusive U.S. distributor of certain Desso high-performance carpet tile products. Conditions include the requirement that Dixie meet certain sales levels and the hospitality JV’s successful launch.
 
“Desso and Masland Contract share the same values of producing environmentally responsible flooring products that stand out in their design and functionality,” said Daniel K. Frierson, CEO, Dixie Group. “We look forward to this exciting new venture.”
 
“Our shared values around innovation, design and green principles will enable Desso to meet its goal of expansion into the U.S. market and support our mutual growth in this high potential market,” said Alexander Collot d’Escury, CEO, Desso.
 
February 11, 2014
 

Auburn Manufacturing Certifies Products Are Made-in-USA

Auburn Manufacturing Inc. (AMI), Mechanic Falls, Maine — a manufacturer of textile products for extreme temperature industrial applications — now is providing its own Country of Origin certificate with every price quotation it sends to its customers. The certificate verifies that every product AMI manufactures is 100-percent made in the United States, from yarn through finished product, at its own plants in Maine; and that all products are compliant with statutes and regulations such as the Berry Amendment, The Buy American Act and Federal Trade Commission regulations with regard to procurement and labeling of Made-in-USA products.
 
“When we certify that our products are ‘Made in the USA,’ we mean that not only are the products themselves assembled in the United States, but that virtually all of the components are also made in the United States,” said Kathie Leonard, president and CEO, AMI. “It is important to note that the word ‘Origin’ refers to the country where the products are made — and not the country from where they are shipped. If suppliers choose to make claims that their products are made in the USA, they must comply with the Federal Trade Commission’s ‘Made in the USA’ policy. This requires a product bearing the words ‘Made in the USA’ to be ‘all or virtually all’ made in the USA.”
 
February 11, 2014
 

Eastman Adds To Cyphrex™ Microfiber Range

Eastman Chemical Co., Kingsport, Tenn., has added a 4.5-micron-diameter polyethylene terephthalate (PET) microfiber to its Cyphrex™ microfiber product line, enabling various formulation options to fine-tune the performance of wetlaid nonwoven fabrics for applications such as filter media.
 
Eastman introduced Cyphrex at IDEA 2013, originally offering the microfibers in a 2.5-micron diameter. The fibers are produced using islands-in-the-sea bicomponent fiber technology (See “Quality Fabric Of The Month: A Sea Change For Microfibers,” TextileWorld.com, September/October 2013). The company reports that the 2.5- and 4.5-micron fibers may be blended to allow specific permeability and pore sizes, and that media made with the blended fibers features better sheet uniformity than media made using only 2.5-micron fibers.
 
“The new 4.5-micron fiber demonstrates our capability of changing size, and manufacturers can use this unique fiber to pinpoint permeability and pore size and to improve media uniformity even further,” said Fred Dulin, director, microfibers platform, Eastman. “These results demonstrate that significant value can be created in nonwoven formulations through specific design of fiber size characteristics and insights provided by industry-standard application development capabilities.”
 
February 11, 2014

 
 
 

Suominen’s Acquisition In Brazil Finalized


HELSINKI, Finland — February 10, 2014 — Suominen Corporation has today completed the acquisition of Paulínia plant in Brazil from Ahlstrom Corporation. The agreement of the transaction was signed and announced on 10 January 2014.

The Paulínia plant will be included in Suominen’s Nonwovens reporting segment as of 1 February 2014.

The closing of the deal provides Suominen a foothold in the growing South American markets and further strengthens its position as the global leader in the nonwovens for wipes. Suominen is now the only manufacturer of nonwovens for wipes with plants in Europe, North America and South America. The Paulínia plant was built in 2008 and it employs approximately 40 persons. The net sales of the plant were approximately EUR 20 million in 2013.

Posted February 10, 2014

Source: Suominen
 

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