Agriculture, Horticulture & Forestry

Autefa Solutions will introduce a new concept fibre recycling line for nonwovens at this year’s Techtextil in Frankfurt, the core components of which, will be high performance balers and a compact tearing machine.

The latest developments in nonwoven applications for Ingeo biopolymer, a low-carbon-footprint polymer made from renewable plant material, will be on display at IDEA13 in Miami, Florida this week. NatureWorks says it will show new grades of Ingeo along with a range of final products which will demonstrate the commercial reality of the biopolymer.

The overall response from the exhibitors and visitors at the latest edition of Techtextil North America was confirmation that they were pleased with the show and venue, organisers say. The tenth edition of Techtextil North America took place from 19-21 March at the Hilton Anaheim in Anaheim, California.

Whether it’s for wind power systems, aerospace technology, stadium roofs made from high-tech membranes, geogrids made from polyester used in landscaping or nonwovens for insulating and roofing, technical textiles cover a very wide range of applications.

Freudenberg Nonwovens will be exhibiting its wide range of products and technologies at IDEA 2013 – the International Engineered Fabrics Conference & Expo, which is being held from 22-25 April in Miami Beach, Florida.

Clarion Events North America, Inc. announced today that a collaboration agreement has been signed with the Industrial Fabrics Association International (IFAI) regarding Clarion’s annual ExpoProducción event in Mexico City. The collaboration will include an IFAI Pavilion and Conference to be held within the annual ExpoProducción trade show in Mexico City beginning with the February 2014 edition.

Perspectives by Bill Smith - a new regular column for Innovation in Textiles. When I began my consulting practice in 1986, I discovered a book called “Innovation – The Attackers Advantage” (Summit Books) by Richard Foster, then a Director of the major consulting firm McKinsey & Co. His message: ” . . . companies must return to the attack . . . the annals of business is filled with . . . companies that seemed profitable yet were in the midst of bankruptcy because they did not anticipate when their present products would become unprofitable and underestimated the strengths of their competitor’s attacks.”

Techtextil is the next exhibition on the calendar for absorbent solutions provider Technical Absorbents (TAL). Hailed as the main technical textiles and nonwovens trade fairs, the event in Frankfurt is expected to be the biggest in the exhibitions history and will cover the whole industry spectrum with its 12 different application areas. The event attracted nearly 30,000 visitors in 2011, and so TAL is preparing for a busy three days. Techtextil takes place at Messe Frankfurt from 11-13 June.

The Dornbirn-Man-Made Fibers Congress (MFC), the leading conference for the man-made fibres industry, will take place for the 52nd time in Dornbirn, Austria from 11-13 September 2013, where over 100 papers will address key industry issues under the banner - ‘Communicating the Future of Man-Made Fibers’.

Horticulture in the Netherlands is big business. Not only is the country an international leader in flowers, plants, bulbs, and food products; it is also in innovator in solutions for greenhouse horticulture. According to the NL Agency, a division of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Dutch greenhouses cover an area of more than 10560 km2, with a focus on technologies that facilitate energy efficiency and adaptability to climate change. A new Netherlands-based company called Elasol, established in 2012, has developed one such technology that uses an innovative elastic, warp-knit textile in an intelligent system to help balance sunlight, shade, temperature and humidity.