Nonwovens live

South Africa venture for Fibertex

Fibertex is to set up a new factory in South Africa with a view to manufacturing and marketing needlepunch products – primarily geotextiles for road works, but also products for the growing South African automotive industry.
The company says it sees a huge potential in the region, with plans in place to invest more than €67 billion in South Africa’s infrastructure over the next five years, and similar plans in neighbouring countries.
“This is a significant expansion of the infrastructure in large parts of southern Africa,” said Jørgen Bech Madsen, CEO of Fibertex Industrial Nonwovens. “Large road and bridge construction projects have been launched and more are under way. Geotextiles are essential elements to such projects and this is where we come in, with our high-tech production at competitive prices.”
Fibertex believes that local production on a state-of-the-art line combined with low production costs and the extensive expertise of Fibertex Industrial Nonwovens in the area will make it an attractive supplier and business partner.
The automotive industry is also experiencing strong growth in southern Africa and this offers the company good opportunities to supply products with limited local availability at present.
For Fibertex, which is owned by the industrial conglomerate Schouw & Co., this is a strategic initiative. After the factory has been run in and the markets have been penetrated, Jørgen Bech Madsen sees a huge future potential in the South African campaign:
“We have competent employees with industry experience to run the factory so we will not be tying up key management resources in the project,” he said. “The factory will have a high-tech, state-of-the-art and competitive production system and we will supply a total Fibertex concept, which means technology and know-how – both in relation to production and administration.”
The factory will have around 40 employees and its annual turnover expected to reach €8-10 million, with decent profit margins, in coming years. From a long-term strategic perspective, the project fserves as a bridgehead – not only to southern Africa, but eventually also to other markets in the Southern Hemisphere such as Australasia, India, the Middle East and South America.
“We see a vast potential in this initiative which both internationalises Fibertex and makes Fibertex Industrial Nonwovens a local and regional player able to compete with the other nonwovens manufacturers in this part of the world,” said Jens Bjerg Sørensen, president of Schouw & Co.
The South African company is jointly owned by Fibertex, the Danish Industrialisation Fund for Developing Countries (IFU) and the South African company Safyr, which is owned partly by local industry specialists and partly by Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) – South Africa’s equivalent to the Danish State investment fund Vækstfonden. Fibertex will invest approximately €3.3 million in the company, acquiring a 26% ownership share. IFU has previously participated in a similar Fibertex project in Malaysia, and the company has the option of acquiring IFU’s 25.8% share in the future.

New PGI lines in the USA and China

Polymer Group (PGI) has announced new investments in spunmelt machines in both the US and China, to serve the hygiene and healthcare markets.
Construction associated with the projects is expected to begin early in the first quarter of 2010 and material from the new lines will be commercially available mid-2011.
The company aims to exploit recent proprietary technological developments to deliver differentiated products with improved barrier, softness and opacity compared to current marketplace materials for use in diapers and surgical gowns and drapes.
The expansion follows investments by the company in Mexico and Europe in 2009.
“PGI’s ongoing investment in global research and development has led to substantial product differentiation and innovation,” said Mike Hale, PGI’s chief operating officer. 

Drying dividends for Ascutec

As energy costs peaked in the middle of 2008, specialist airlaid nonwovens manufacturer Ascutec GmbH, based in Nürnberg, Germany, realised that power for its operations had risen to amount to 25% of its total manufacturing costs.
Within a short time the company was losing a not inconsiderable portion of its margin to these higher and unanticipated costs.
Ascutec’s line is configured to allow for rapid product changes in order to to accommodate smaller orders – irrespective of the required patterning or area weight – that would not be feasible on larger lines where longer changeover times would be necessary. For this reason, line efficiency is absolutely critical.
Relocation to a new factory at the end of last year gave the company the opportunity to consider ways of further improving the energy efficiency of its manufacturing line.
In respect of the web forming machinery, the company completely modernised its drive and control system and then examined the available alternatives to its existing dryer.
 “The company sourced information from various suppliers, looking to improve efficiency without compromising on the technology, and comparing different heating systems, as well as the techical innovations available for recovering energy,” explained Christian Haas of Switzerland’s Strahm Hi-Tex Systems AG. “The drying solution the company eventually opted for was a dryer from us which is equipped with both an intelligent energy management system and a multi-stage energy recovery unit.”
On moving to its new factory, Ascutec anticipated problems at the re-start of production, having had no prior experience of the new dryer.
“Ascutec was particularly concerned about the energy recovery system, which primarily consists of an air-to-air heat exchanger,” Mr Haas explained. “Anyone who knows cellulose fibres and pulp is aware that during processing they tend to generate a lot of contamination and dust, and that by their nature, heat exchangers are prone to clogging.
“The Strahm Hi-Tex dryer, however, has been developed to cope extremely efficiently with dust-laden airstreams, and proved extremely effective in dealing with the dust levels generated by Ascutec’s process.”
The company is also able to keep it clean without any extra cleaning intervals, and easy access ensures cleaning cycles are short.
 “As far as energy savings are concerned, Ascutec has found that Strahm’s claims were absolutely accurate,” Mr Haas concluded. “Because energy costs are now much lower than they were last year, this is not as important as it was, but in comparison to the previous dryer the company was using, and the options offered by other suppliers, the payback is still excellent.”

Spunlacers face profitability issues

The global capacity for spunlaced bonded nonwovens in 2009 is estimated in a new report by consultancy John R. Starr to be 1.3 million tonnes. 
Several major factors have influenced producer profitability around the world, the report says, including:

• Rising raw materials costs and availability.
• Supply/demand imbalances.
• The increasing use of modern, high capacity, low-cost technology to serve large commodity market segments.
• The emergence of new global and regional producers; producer consolidation and restructuring.
• An increasingly broader range of raw material combinations and web forming technologies.

 
The industry is made up of nearly 150 producers who will, in 2009, about 235 production lines.
Modern, high output specialty designed lines have been, and will continue to be, installed which utilise an increasingly wide range of web forming technologies and raw materials to serve large commodity and speciality niche markets in a cost-effective manner.
The new report, Spunlaced Nonwoven World Capacities and  Manufacturing Economics 2003 – 2009, 2013, covers the time period 2003-2009 and forecasts for 2010 and 2013 It provides producer and country/regional information on spunlaced nonwoven capacities, planned expansions, potential retirements and capacity shares. 
Producer nameplate capacity information in annual tonnes is described by line, web forming technology, raw material capability, technology provider and commissioning date.
Manufacturing cost benchmarks for key units of installed capacity are provided for major classes of spunlaced web forming technology platforms including carded, tissue/dry laid, airlace, wet laid and spunbonded composites and other composite combinations, based on estimates of regional raw material costs during the third quarter of 2009. 
Details: www.johnrstarr.com

SCA to add new line in Russia

SCA is to invest over €13 million in a new production line for incontinence care products in Russia.
The company believes the move will allow it to make considerable costs savings in transportation costs and import duties by decreasing the amount of such products it currently supplies to Russia from operations in Poland and Holland.
The Russian market for personal care products is characterised by strong growth and SCA established itself in the Moscow region in 2008, when it installed production facilities for baby diapers.
The new line for incontinence products will also be installed at the plant currently making diapers in the city of Veniov in the Tula district, approximately 180 km south of Moscow.

Chisso and Fiberweb look at JV in China

Japan’s Chisso and UK-headquartered Fiberweb are currently evaluating the establishment of a new jointly-owned spunbond nonwovens manufacturing operation in China.
The proposed venture would focus on hygiene and personal care products and employ the latest generation of spunmelt manufacturing technology, benefiting from the extensive experience of both partners in this field..
Both companies consider the personal hygiene market in China and other Asian markets to be of strategic importance in the future development of their nonwoven production businesses. The feasibility study will focus on evaluating the technologies and volumes that will be required to support these markets over the coming three to five years.

Metso to buy Tamfelt

Tamfelt – the Finish-headquartered manufacturer of clothing for paper machines and filtration fabrics, employing both woven and nonwoven technologies – is to become part of Metso.
With sales of €6.8 billion in 2008, Metso, which is also headquartered in Finland, employs 28,000 people in more than 50 countries and is organised in three segments: Mining and Construction Technology, Energy and Environmental Technology and Paper and Fiber Technology.
In recent years, Metso’s growth has been most significant in the mining and construction industries but it is also the global leader in the manufacture of paper and board making lines, as well as tissue machines, pulp and paper accounting for 37% of overall sales in 2008.
The integration of Tamfelt makes good strategic sense, since its products are essentially components for many of Metso’s machines, not only in pulp and paper, but also in filter systems required across the board.
Tamfelt’s sales in the nine months to September 2009 were €93 million compared to €127.2 million in the same period of 2008. Its profit after taxes, however, was just €300,000 in the first nine months of 2009, compared to €11.4 million in the comparative period of 2008.
Tamfelt’s PMC (paper machine clothing) business operates manufacturing units in Tampere and Juankoski in Finland and in Tianjin, China.
The demand for paper and board has been low for much of 2009, the company reports, with capacity cuts and temporary shutdowns reducing production and little investment in  new manufacturing lines, along with reduced inventories. This, however, now appears to be changing, particularly in China.
Tamfelt Filtration manufactures products for both wet and dry filtration processes and laundry felts for large commercial laundries. The company enjoys a strong position in the global filter fabric market for the paper and pulp industries and is the world leader in laundry felts. Other important applications for its filter materials  include desulphurization of coal power plants, iron pelletizing plants, waste water treatment plants and dust removal of incineration plants. Tamfelt Filtration operates manufacturing plants in Tampere, Finland, Ovar, Portugal, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, Łódź, Poland and Shanghai, China.
The demand for wet filtration products in all markets except China has been lower in 2009 than 2008, although again, it is now said to be picking up, as is the dry filtration market.

Lenzing announces €120 million expansion

The Lenzing Group will continue to expand production capacity in 2010 by investing a scheduled €120 million in its European and Asian sites.
The key elements are the further extension of both pulp production and fibres at sites in Austria, in addition to a remodelling the Tencel site at Grimsby in the UK.
 “We are expecting continuing strong demand for Lenzing fibres over the coming years and with these projects we intend to secure and enhance our lead in terms of quantity as well as quality,” said chairman Peter Untersperger.
In a couple of weeks, the fourth production line of Indonesian subsidiary PT South Pacific Viscose (SPV) will become operational. After two years of construction activity and a total investment of about US$150 million, fibre production capacity will be increased from 160,000 to 220,000 tons per year.
“Already today we expect that demand will exceed Indonesian production capacity,” said Friedrich Weninger, Lenzing board member. “We will therefore begin with debottlenecking production right after start-up, with the aim of increasing SPV production capacity by another 18,000 tons to 238,000 tons per year”.
In the special fibres sector, Lenzing plans to expand production at the Tencel site in Heiligenkreuz, Austria, by 10,000 tons to 60,000 tons per year, as exports to China, South Korea and India keep growing. In addition, the Tencel site in Grimsby will be remodelled to produce a new Tencel special fibre.
The site for the production of special fibres at Lenzing in Austria – the biggest fibre producer of the Lenzing Group – will be enhanced by an eco-friendly ozone bleach facility for pulp production in 2010, to maintain the current degree of self-supply despite increasing fibre production. In addition, pulp production will be increased to an annual capacity of 260,000 tons.

Rieter to sell Perfojet

Rieter is to sell its nonwovens machinery subsidiary Perfojet to international technology group Andritz.

Located in Montbonnot, France, Rieter Perfojet’s technologies include the Spunjet spunbonding system and the JetLace hydroentanglement unit. It has 50 employees and generates annual sales of approximately Sfr 40 million.
In the face of the current economic crisis Rieter has decided to focus its Textile Systems Division on short staple spinning technology.
The parties have agreed not to disclose the purchase price and completion of the transaction, which is subject to the consent of anti-trust authorities.
Andritz, based in Graz, Austria, is a publicly listed, international technology group with more than 13,000 employees, and generated sales of some €3.6 billion in 2008. Andritz already operates in the nonwovens machinery business through its subsidiary, calender specialist Andritz Küsters, based in Krefeld, Germany.
In the first half of the 2009 financial year Rieter generated sales of some Sfr 900 million and now has 12,500 employees worldwide. The Textile Systems Division accounted for Sfr 250 million and the Automotive Systems Division for Sfr 650 million.

New filter for office hazard

At the recent A+A show for safety, health and security at work, held in Düsseldorf, Germany, manufacturer of self-adhesive system solutions Tesa presented its new Clean Air particulate filter.
This is aimed at combatting particulate emissions from laser printers in offices.
Laser printers emit large volumes of particulate matter which are invisible to the naked eye and can find  their way into the lungs and even the bloodstream, the company says.
To illustrate the risk they pose, Tesa displayed a measurement station which, working under cleanroom conditions, measured and displayed these particulate emissions, with a comparison between an unused filter and a used one making the value of its new product clear.
Clean Air has been proven in tests by TÜV Nord to  cut particulate emissions from laser printers by up to 94%.
In a full-day event for journalists organised by Tesa and its product partner Freudenberg, environmental medicine specialist Dr Wolfgang Huber answered questions on the health risks posed by particulates and explained the current status of the research on this topic. “There are mounting indications that particulate emissions from laser printers affect human health,” he said. “Particulate filters can be used preventively to help avoid this.”
Thanks to falling purchase prices, the number of laser printers in use has skyrocketed in recent years. Two million laser printers were sold in Germany alone in 2008. The majority of the printers are used in offices – more than 70% of German office employees work with laser printers. And most of them (82%) sit less than three metres away from the device itself.
According to one recent study, the German population associates particulate matter predominantly with car emissions. But it’s possible the same risk exists in offices. A number of different scientific studies indicate that laser printer particulate emissions can be harmful to human health. The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment has also been unable to rule out the risk, and urgently recommends further medical research into the effects of exposure.
Clean Air is being jointly marketed by Tesa and Freudenberg Filtration Technologies.