Our Intelligence channels offer market intelligence, technical reports and deep-dive analysis of key industry motivators, technologies, materials and impactors. WTiN Intelligence provides detailed analysis of important high-growth areas of the textile and apparel industry. WTiN’s expert team of analysts and network of researchers go beyond the what and the why to look at what might come next, what businesses need to contend with in an evolving global supply chain, and how they can take advantage of the opportunities on the horizon.
Industry insight, market information, and the connections you need to examine and evaluate market trends in the roll-to-roll digital textile printing sector.
By Joseph Link
Market and technical intelligence essential to the activewear and athleisure textile and clothing industries.
By Jessica Owen
By Cara Dudgeon
By Jessica Owen
By Jessica Owen
In-depth intelligence about textiles used in outdoor sportswear, footwear and equipment, as well as textile applications that require protection from external environments - such as workwear and PPE.
By Cara Dudgeon
By Adrian Wilson
By Jessica Owen
By Jessica Owen
In-depth intelligence on the materials, manufacturing technologies and application areas of smart textiles.
By Jessica Owen
By Victoria Nickerson
By Jessica Owen
By Lutz Walter
Providing investors and decision makers in the textile and apparel value chain with in-depth analysis and insight into the digitalisation of manufacturing processes and smart business models.
By Cara Dudgeon
By Otis Robinson
By Joseph Link
Our WTiNews channels take a look at global textile and apparel industry innovation, businesses, technology and markets, provided by WTiN’s in-house team of journalists. WTiNews is set apart from basic news content as it discerns the importance of changes and developments in the supply chain. WTiNews doesn’t only tell you ‘what’ has happened, it also covers impact, the bigger picture and the industry’s response to trends, events and more.
A viewpoint on both natural and manmade fibres and yarns, as seen through the eyes of manufacturers, growers, processors and spinners, with a mix of technical articles, analysis and product innovation news.
By John Scrimshaw
Analysis and manufacturing technology updates for the global fabric manufacturing industries and their supply-chain partners.
By Keith Nuthall
By Jessica Owen
News, analysis and technical information on the important realms of dyeing, finishing, printing (both screen and digital) and coating.
By Joseph Link
News, market insight, analysis and product development updates from the fast-growing markets in technical textiles, covering all applications and end uses.
By Jessica Owen
By Cara Dudgeon
By Cara Dudgeon
By Jessica Owen
Unrivalled coverage of the manufacture and uses of engineered polymer and fibre ‘non-textile’ products.
By Jessica Owen
By Cara Dudgeon
By Cara Dudgeon
Your instant window on the global raw materials prices, trade movements, resources and manufacturing costs that can affect the profitability of your textile products.
By Nitin Madkaikar
By Paul Deane
By Nitin Madkaikar
Digital Textile is the world’s only journal dedicated wholly to textile applications in the rapidly developing field of digital printing.
International Dyer & Finisher is the unrivalled world leader in the delivery of vital sector-specific information for textile dyers, finishers, printers and coaters.
Knitting International is uniquely placed to give a worldwide perspective to manufacturers and retailers in the ever-more globalised and diversified knitting industry.
Nonwovens Report International (NRI) keeps you up-to-date with the latest developments across the nonwovens market. With its team of technical and industry experts, NRI makes use of its close ties with associations, research institutes and market-leading businesses to bring you international reporting that covers areas all over the world.
Previously known as IoTex, the newly relaunched Textile 4.0 journal delivers vital insights into the burgeoning transformation of the textile and apparel value chain. It covers a spectrum of content, from technologies enabling the personalisation trend to supply chain transparency, the latest in fabric gripping robotics, smart clothing and much more.
Twist is read across the textile supply chain, from early stage processors to retailers, with its primary focus the provenance of fine natural fibres such as wool, cotton, silk, linen, cashmere and mohair, as well as rare and speciality fibres.
Many critics argue the textile & apparel industry has neglected its environmental responsibility for too long. And because of marketing ploys to suggest otherwise, the term ‘greenwashing’ has become mainstream leading commentators to call for change, which includes a greater degree of transparency.
But despite cynicism in certain quarters, there is hope that the textile finishing industry is turning a corner. Some original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have combined innovation with the need for change and thus more sustainable solutions have entered the market. Meanwhile, consumer awareness is impacting buying habits, particularly among younger generations, which would ultimately hit the pockets of brands and manufacturers – this trend is considered likely to instigate change.
One company boasting innovative technology is Germany-based adphos with its advancedNearInfraRed (aNIR) platform, which the company says marks a milestone in improving the efficiency of energy intensive thermal processes in the textile industry – the company’s technology also applies to the metallurgy, plastic-forming, printing, and coating industries.
During the last quarter of a century, adphos has garnered a reputation for drying and curing machinery, but has only recently focused its attention on the textiles market – the second most pollutive industry to petrochemicals.
“The industry standard when it comes to drying and curing textiles is to burn gas to heat the warm air dryer, in which there is a ventilation system to extract the steam that is produced,” says Frank de Jonge, sales director, adphos Group. “If you applied 100g-150g of liquid to one sqm of fabric and a company wanted to dry this, they would need to bring it to a warm air tunnel where the process eventually evaporates the moisture and dries out the fabric.”
adphos’ signature solution operates differently to reach the same outcome, however, and has been key to the company’s growth through the decades, explains de Jonge. “With aNIR, a sophisticated flow of warm air is combined with the specific characteristics of the powerful irradiation in the NearInfraRed wavelength spectrum, achieving a high-energy density up to 1.5 megawatts (MW) per sqm.”
The polar molecules of water react significantly faster to this kind of irradiation. “In other words, the water from the fluid evaporates at the speed of light, says de Jonge, while the un-polar fabric stays more or less cool.”
The advantages of adphos aNIR-technology for the textile industry have been validated in printed electronics projects for “electroluminescent wall decoration in a coating and printing process,” de Jonge says. The company’s aNIR technology is already being utilised by leading manufacturers across the textile industry, including companies at the forefront of the digital textile printing market that operate direct-to-garment (DTG) and roll-to-roll solutions.
adphos developed a dryer for an inkjet single-pass-printer following ITMA 2019 in Barcelona. The footprint of the adphos drying module is more than 80% smaller than a comparable warm-air-dryer heated by fossil fuels and up to 70% shorter than standard InfraRed dryers. In single-pass printing, the dryer and the printer are together which is why the machines appear to consume more floor space, but on the flip side there is less need for auxiliary equipment elsewhere on the production floor.
Nevertheless, de Jonge continues: “adphos’ aNIR technology can evaporate a water-based primer with 250 gsm wet application from cotton within seconds while maintaining a fabric temperature below 100°C.”
adphos can detail a whole host of features that support the argument to invest in aNIR technology. The simpler the solution is to implement and operate, the more appealing it is to the user, and improving uptime by enhancing a machine’s reliability and eliminating warm-up and stand-by times is a key factor in the purchasing decisions of countless textile manufacturers.
According to adphos, the benefits of implementing aNIR-technology include: significantly reduced energy consumption due to high evaporation rates; supported mass transport by the adphos WAVe-concept (Warm Air Ventilation); zero CO2 emissions courtesy of the electro thermal process; a compact design [two-metre long dryer for a 60 metre per minute line speed]; adjustable power according to the colourant-chemistry, its absorption characteristics and the fluid mass applied; an adjustable drying width; the possibility for vertical or horizontal positioning; and no energy waste during standby or start-up.
The company’s aNIR-drying systems are available as boosters to integrate into existing installations to speed up current processes, or as stand-alone drying and curing solutions. “[Our] aNIR concepts are fully adaptable to the performance requirements of the individual application,” says de Jonge. “Often booster solutions are paid for with productivity increases within a matter of months as productivity of existing equipment can be increased remarkably with a comparably low investment.”
The issue of sustainability, which has arguably lost its meaning in the decades since the term was first coined, has remained a prevalent issue throughout the pandemic and the economic turmoil that ensued.
If we focus on the good news, investments in research and development (R&D) have resulted in the emergence of a growing variety of environmentally conscious technologies for textile manufacturing that are either less energy intensive, consume fewer hazardous chemicals or produce less wastewater.
But these technologies are in their infancy, demand for them is still low, and as a result they are charged at a premium. And even operating the machines following initial investment can be a burden on finances compared to more traditional solutions.
Many businesses acknowledge that the environment poses a serious challenge to the textile industry. But the cost of environmentally friendly practices is delaying change despite the introduction of more stringent regulations in certain economies, particularly Europe.
De Jonge explains there are several ways to assess pricing, but it is also good to focus on the industry’s overriding ambition.
"If we say our efficiency is around five times better than gas [kilowatt vs kilowatt], and gas is US$0.03 and electricity is US$0.15, you're on par,” he says. “So there is proof that our [adphos aNIR] technology is much more efficient, but because of the low price of gas compared to electricity it [aNIR] is not attractive yet.
"It is true that investment in an adphos dryer is higher than in a gas dryer, but the CO2 discussion makes gas more expensive. We have CO2 certificates in many countries – in the UK the charge is £25 per tonne of CO2 generated and the prices are likely to rise. At the moment, Switzerland and Sweden are at the forefront; they are already charging more than EUR€100 per tonne of CO2 generated, which customers have to pay when they buy their fuel. So this benefits adphos’ drying technology and this is why we believe in our proposal for the textile industry. But there is an ethical and moral element to this, too, rather than simple cost savings.“
Have your say. Tweet and follow us @WTiNcomment
The Discovery Panel is a subscriber only feature.
If you would like to learn more about subscribing to the site and services, then please contact +44 113 819 8155 or email sales@wtin.com.
If you would like to learn more about the Discovery Panel features and how it works then please click here.
Keywords relating to the article being analysed. Hover over the keyword to see the relevance (0 low relevance, 1 high relevance) and click a keyword to open a search for more related content.
Entity breakdown of article being analysed. The chart shows entities (companies, organisations, people, locations, regions and technologies) that are referenced in the article. Hover over an entity to see how relevant it is in the article (0 low relevance, 1 high relevance) and click an entity to open a search for more related content.
Concepts relating to the article being analysed. Hover over the main nodes to see the concept name and relevance. Click the concepts to see the relevant dpedia.com link. The child nodes from each concept are the most relevant other articles on wtin.com to that concept. Click these to open the article and hover over to see the article name and relevance to that concept. Relevance values are 0 to 1 with 1 being of most relevance.
Concepts relating to the article being analysed. Hover over the main nodes to see the concept name and relevance. Click the concepts to see the relevant dpedia.com link. The child nodes from each concept are the most influencing companies, organisations and people to that concept. Click these to open the a search to find more content related to that influencer. Influencer nodes are sized by how much influence they have on the concept they are linked to.
Your subscription doesn’t allow access to this content. You’re just minutes away from adding this content to your subscription.