Advanced Textiles Moving Forward

ight years ago, world nations came together and adopted Sustainability Development Goals (SDG). Aimed at battling global poverty, climate change and focus on economic development in a sustainable way, there are 17 goals, which are termed as SDG.

Adopting some goals listed in SDG offers challenges and at the same provides opportunities. Textile materials, particularly advanced textiles like nonwovens, composites and hybrid material, can find many applications related to goals adopted by the United Nations, such as infrastructure development.

Scientific and technological developments taking place in infrastructure, transportation, medicine, agriculture, and environment sectors, are pushing the textile sector to be innovative and nimble.

Adversity Enabling the Growth

COVID-19 has provided great opportunities and challenges. Nonwoven-based healthcare and hygiene products like breathable viral barrier protective gowns, medical drapes, hospital bedsheets, medical and non-medical surgical masks, filtering facepiece respirators such as R95 and N95 were in the limelight and were used immensely. This is a positive factor for the textile sector as advanced textile products have become daily kitchen table discussion points, bringing enormous attention and visibility to textiles. Such an impactful scenario is needed to revive the manufacturing sector in the United States and other developed economies.

The Biden Administration’s American Rescue Plan is enabling the revival of textile manufacturing such as manufacturing of defense, medical and protective textiles at companies such as Auburn Manufacturing in Maine, to name a few. While the above scenario is a positive aspect for manufacturing, it also exposed vulnerabilities such as the dependency on imported textiles, the overcapacity in the manufacturing of commodity textiles such as spinning in leading textile manufacturing countries, and the need for new and functionalized raw materials from fiber to finish. Research and development, as well as large scale manufacturing of advanced and niche products will take the industry to the next phase.

Innovation: A Way Forward

With sustainability rightly taking the front seat, interest in natural fiber-based advanced textiles, functionalization of textiles using environmentally friendly chemicals, scaling up of greener technologies and processing methods like wider width plasma finishing, nano metal oxide-based additive manufacturing, etc., offer immense promise.

Linkages Are Important

The textiles sector has realized the need to revitalize and must focus on greater R&D investments, skill development, industry-academia collaborations, and multinational partnerships. More importantly, while domestic manufacturing needs support and revival, targeted trade agreements will enable enhanced marketing opportunities.

Small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) can benefit more by B2B linkages, enabling increased opportunities for R&D intensive advanced textiles that will create high paying jobs and greater marketing opportunities. SMEs can benefit by sponsoring research in academia, licensing inventions from federal laboratories and research-intensive universities. Such linkages offer win-win advantages for SMEs and universities as universities benefit by transferring laboratory ideas to the marketplace with the help of industry. Academia can avail access to contract research. Linkages with chambers of commerce, economic development organizations and local governments can spearhead economic growth and job creation. Opportunities are plenty for personnel protective equipment manufacturers and natural fiber producers such as cotton, hemp, and flax, to name a few.

A case in point is the successful collaboration between Chantilly, USA-based First Line Technology, Hobbs Bonded Fibers, a nonwoven manufacturer, and Texas Tech University. This collaborative endeavor first resulted in a defense product, which is a non-particulate toxic chemical decontamination wipe. However, due to the continued efforts of First Line Technology, the nonwoven wipe technology has transferred into a wipe that can absorb opioid products leading to life saving measures. Such developments can happen due to collaborative efforts and greater support from the industry.

The way forward for the textile sector is to look forward to finding multisector applications, academia-industry relationships, and international linkages. As the sector is facing a multitude of regulations, support and advocacy efforts by global policy agencies and industry associations such as INDA are vital more than ever. Advanced and sustainable manufacturing is the path of the future for the nonwoven and advanced textiles sector.