A revolution in textile production
There’s immense market demand for a more sustainably produced textile fibre. Metsä Spring’s new, green textile fibre aims to meet this demand.
ANNA GUSTAFSSON, photos JOHAN AHLROTH, STUDIO TITI
Back in 2014, Niklas von Weymarn , then Metsä Fibre’s VP, Research, was sitting on a flight to Tokyo. He was on his way to visit the textile division of the Japanese trade and investment group Itochu. The conglomerate Itochu Corpo- ration, one of Metsä Fibre’s minority shareholders, is a lead- ing textile supplier and manufacturer in the Asian markets. Von Weymarn’s gift to Itochu consisted of a new way to make textile fibre from pulp using a direct dissolution method. “We wanted to introduce a new, sustainably produced textile fibre to the market, but we also needed a partner with strong knowledge of the international textile market,” says von Weymarn, who nowadays is the CEO of Metsä Spring, a venture capital company founded in 2018 and part of Metsä Group. A NEW DEMO PLANT Itochu decided to join the development work and later, in October 2018, the collaboration resulted in the decisions to invest in a demo plant and to set up a new joint venture to implement the investment. The demo plant, which uses undried pulp as its raw ma- terial, was built in 2019 on the premises of Metsä Fibre’s Äänekoski bioproduct mill. The end product is a dried, cotton-like staple fibre, and the demo plant can produce around a tonne of it a day. Metsä Group’s current interest in the textile market does not extend any further than the production of the staple fibre. The material is shipped via Vuosaari harbour, in Hel- sinki, to Itochu, which is responsible for processing the staple fibre into a textile. PROBLEMATIC OIL-BASED FABRICS The growth of the global economy has raised living stand- ards particularly in Asia and Africa. The demand for tex- tiles has increased not only in terms of clothes, but also in the furniture and construction industries as upholstering and insulation material. The annual worldwide production of textile fibre amounts to more than a hundred million tonnes. More
than half of this is made from oil. In washing machines and landfills, oil-based fabrics release harmful microplas- tics which accumulate in oceans and are carried from there to everywhere else in the ecosystem, including the air. Not even cotton and hemp are entirely good choices in terms of the environment, given that their cultivation requires a lot of land, fertilisers, pesticides and water. Nor are all wood-based textile fibres carefree, since the chemi- cals used in the production of viscose, for example, pollute nature and are harmful to production personnel. “There’s immense market demand for a more sustaina- bly produced textile fibre. We now have indications that the new method for producing wood-based staple fibres works. However, in the next phase we need to further develop the method in order to reach the efficiencies re- quired on an industrial-scale”. UNIQUE WOOD-BASED SOLUTION Potential competitors are not hard to come by – the search for alternative textile materials made from raw materials as diverse as fish skin, bark and pineapple leaves is intense. Thanks to the availability of the wood raw material and the material’s properties, wood-based fibre nevertheless has a huge potential to reach the mass market. The new fabric made from wood feels soft on the skin and breathes in use. Niklas von Weymarn considers it a good thing that wood is not an entirely new arrival on the textile market. “The risk would be greater if we were introducing both a new material and new production method at the same time.” Even so, progress has been deliberately cautious, regard- less of the new demo plant being such a significant invest- ment. Production on the industrial scale is being pursued by increasing competence and know-how. “For Metsä Group, this represents our long-term devel- opment work which, if successful, could turn into a new, important business area. There are many signs indicating that this is a good time to be involved in the market for textile fibres.” •
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