Techtextil, Texprocess Frankfurt to present Innovation Awards

As many as 13 winners from seven categories will be honoured at a public awards ceremony at Techtextil and Texprocess on 21 June, 2022. With their new products, materials, solutions and processes, the 13 award winners are demonstrating in an exemplary manner that textile innovations are the ideal way to create market opportunities and boost future business revenues, out of the challenges of the present, the organiser said in a press release.

In the "New Product" category, the Techtextil Innovation Award will be given to the Institute of Textile Machinery and High Performance Material Technology (ITM) at the Technische Universität Dresden. Together with medical product manufacturers and heart surgeons from the Cardiovascular Center Würzburg and the Universitätsklinikum Würzburg, textile researchers from the ITM have succeeded in developing the world's first woven heart valve that does not require a single seam or other joining technique. "Our new development should also help children with heart valve defects in the future by growing with the heart of the young patients - avoiding repeated surgical interventions," says Dr.-Ing. Dilbar Aibibu, research group leader for biotextiles and medical textiles at ITM.

In the "New Material '' category, RBX Créations (France) will receive the Innovation Award for a novel cellulose fibre made from hemp waste. The material, named Iroony, was developed with regard to the following question: Hemp is now grown either to make fibre or to produce hemp oil - but could not the two be combined? RBX Créations has now succeeded in developing a process for extracting cellulose from the waste of oilseed hemp. Spun into textile fibres, it can be used to produce sustainable textiles, packaging and other "green" products. The award is given to RBX Créations for its continuous and successful efforts to convert waste from a renewable source into a valuable cellulose fibre that meets the highest sustainability standards.

The Techtextil Innovation Award in the "New Technology" category will be given to Aachen-based FibreCoat GmbH and Deutsche Basalt Faser GmbH from Sangerhausen (Saxony-Anhalt) for the joint development of an aluminum-coated basalt fibre. It combines the strength of basalt with the electrical conductivity of aluminum. According to FibreCoat, electromagnetic shielding as wallpaper in buildings in hospitals or server farms, among other places, should be up to 20 times cheaper than with conventional aluminum foil thanks to the new development. Another attractive and particularly fast-growing market is shielding solutions for electric cars. Robert Brüll, CEO of FibreCoat said, "For a young company like ours, winning the Techtextil Innovation Award is an important milestone. We are honored to receive this prestigious award from the independent jury of experts. In particular, the confidence of our customers and visibility gained as a result are crucial for a start-up like FibreCoat on the road to market success."

Kelheim Fibres GmbH from Kelheim in Bavaria and the Saxon Textile Research Institute (STFI) in Chemnitz will receive the Techtextil Innovation Award in the "New Concept" category for the development of novel, thermally bonded nonwovens based on cellulose for the production of reusable products with high absorbency. Consumers should no longer have to choose between high-performance or environmentally friendly products. Nature and performance of hygiene products go hand in hand due to the innovation of Kelheim, STFI and the Berlin-based start-up SUMO. Dr Marina Crnoja-Cosic, director new business development at Kelheim Fibres, said, "It is a great honor and pleasure for us to receive the Techtextil Innovation Award together with our partners. We see the award not only as a distinction for the project presented, but also as recognition of our innovation strategy. After all, in dialogue with partners we can react more quickly to current trends, develop in a more targeted manner and accelerate the commercialisation of innovative solutions."

Another Techtextil Innovation Award in the category "New Approaches on Sustainability & Circular Economy" will honour a process that uses natural leather waste from the automotive industry to produce innovative textile coatings. It was developed by CITEVE, the Technology Center for Textile and Clothing in Portugal, and partners ERT Têxtil Portugal, CeNTI and CTIC (all Portugal). After CITEVE researchers discovered that cutting operations in the automotive industry generate a large amount of natural leather classified as waste, they sought a solution to reuse it. The expert jury recognises the development as a successful industrial symbiosis: "Waste from one industrial sector is used here as a resource in another. The work of the CITEVE researchers thus supports an important trend toward a resource-efficient, environmentally friendly and sustainable textile industry."

The Techtextil Innovation Award in the category "New Approaches on Sustainability & Circular Economy" will be awarded to the textile research institute Centexbel (Belgium) for a bio-based and compostable dispersion for textile coatings and printing inks. The new development does not require solvents and brings a completely new type of polymer for coatings and printing inks to the market. According to the expert jury, the innovation is an important step for the textile coating industry towards more products based on renewable resources.

The Italian company Vérabuccia will be honoured in the "Performance Fashion Award" category for an innovative production process for the fashion and design sector. The patented process is designed to transform fruit waste into fashion highlights. In the "New Technology" category, the company OrganoClick (Sweden) will receive the Techtextil Innovation Award for the development of a 100 per cent bio-based binder for nonwovens applications that is made from waste components and is therefore said to be fully compostable. The third award in the category "New Approaches on Sustainability & Circular Economy" will go to Deutschen Institute für Textil- und Faserforschung Denkendorf (DITF) from Baden-Württemberg and the company TotalEnergies - Cray Valley (France).

In the "New Technology" category of the Texprocess Innovation Award, as many as three winners will receive the award this year.

The welding and sewing machine manufacturer Vetron Typical Europe GmbH (Kaiserslautern) will be honoured for a new type of cold gluing robot. For the first time, it is to perform the sealing of seams with adhesive tape on the reverse side completely automatically. Cold gluing, for example for decorative seams on dashboards or closing seams in outdoor clothing, is state of the art in many industries. But because the adhesive tape has to be cut off manually, the technology could not be combined with the high demands of process automation, for example in the automotive industry. Until now. For the first time, the new special robot applies the adhesive tape in an automated process and also cuts it off automatically using a tape cutter. According to Vetron, the innovation, which was presented publicly for the first time at Texprocess, is already attracting great interest from the automotive industry.

The second award in the "New Technology" category will go to ZSK Stickmaschinen GmbH from Krefeld for a new type of embroidery head for single- and multi-head embroidery machines. According to ZSK, the "R-head" is designed to achieve embroidery speeds of up to 2,000 stitches per minute. By comparison, traditional multi-head embroidery machines currently achieve embroidery speeds of up to a maximum of 1,200 stitches per minute. With this innovation, ZSK aims to enable a new dimension of productivity with higher embroidery precision and reliability even at high embroidery speeds. According to ZSK, the R-head significantly reduces noise emissions compared to current embroidery heads. Customers should also be able to replace it themselves if necessary.

The third winner in this award category is Juki Central Europe (Poland), which has developed an AW-3S automatic bobbin thread winding and feeding device. This not only automatically calculates the amount of bobbin thread required when loading a sewing pattern, but can even change the sewing thread automatically, according to the manufacturer. AW-3S is thus designed not only to increase productivity, but at the same time to save operators from having to change the sewing thread manually. This reduces staff fatigue, allowing them to concentrate more on production and quality control. The jury welcomes the conversion of a manual process into an automated one as another example of Industry 4.0.

The industrial sewing machine manufacturer Dürkopp Adler will receive the Texprocess Innovation Award in the category "New Digitalization" for its software module "QONDAC Guided Working". The company from Bielefeld wants to take digitalisation in the sewing industry to a new level. In interaction with programmable sewing machines, QONDAC Guided Working is intended to become the perfect link between planning, operating personnel and machine by supporting processes from production planning to the last work step at the final workstation. In addition, manual workstations or conventional sewing machines can also be easily integrated into the network.

The Techtextil and Texprocess Innovation Awards will be presented in Hall 9.0. Textile innovations selected by international expert juries will be awarded prizes and presented publicly on all four days of the trade fair in Hall 9.1 (Techtextil) and 9.0 (Texprocess), in some cases for the first time. Here, visitors will have the unique opportunity to experience all the award-winning new developments in one place. For the 16th  time, the Innovation Awards at the leading trade fairs Techtextil and Texprocess will offer an excellent platform for cross-industry exchange between players from business, science and politics and for initiating forward-looking cooperations.

The event Techtextil and Texprocess will be held from 21 to 24 June 2022.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (RR)