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IMPRESSIONS from a Cross-section

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What percentage of your turnover is invested in R&D towards fibre development/innovation? Is this amount going to be increased in the near future?

Next level is to inject new features:

The call for eco-friendly products has been getting louder for years now and the pandemic has only accelerated the process of new fibre development or adding more features to existing fibres. Fibre2fashion spoke to some brand advocates of the fibre industry about the kind of money their companies are putting aside for Research and Development work.


Hoi Kwan Lam: I do not have the exact data in my hand right now, but I would say around 40 full-time employees in R&D. Yes, we are still planning to invest more in R&D. It doesn't have to be in term of head counts; it can be facilities as well. We invest a lot in equipment because we do a lot of different new testing. 

Before the pandemic we were famous for cooling technology-Heiq Smart Temp-that makes the fabric dynamic. It is a textile technology that provides fabrics with the ability to interact with body temperature and dynamically respond to body heat. And in the industry, there is no such test to quantify the performance. What we do is even develop a test that would evaluate the performance of our own technology. So many people ask: is there an ISO test for it? The answer is no, because this is a new mechanism that we apply for textiles that no one has ever done before. In 2020, most of the R&D budgets had moved away, but for our Heiq Smart Temp we see more than a 10 per cent growth.

Florian Heubrandner: We have invested over €50 million into our R&D programmes and are dedicated to finding ways to drive further industry innovations and supporting the ecosystem to become more sustainable. For us, the bottom line is that these investments benefit our customers because they can optimally differentiate themselves from the competition by using innovative Tencel fibre products to make a difference.

Sharon Chong: In late-2019, Royal Golden Eagle (RGE) committed to invest $200 million over 10 years towards next generation solutions for a sustainable fashion industry. The investment's targeted allocation is 70:20:10 in scaling up proven clean technology in fibre manufacturing, bringing pilot scale production to commercial scale and R&D in emerging frontier solutions respectively.

In Oct 2020, RGE released a 2019-20 progress report which captures many of Sateri's achievements in fibre innovation in the past year, including the launch of our recycled fibre Finex, inaugural production of lyocell and others. About 34 per cent of expenditure went into R&D towards emerging frontier solutions, while 62 per cent went into scaling up proven clean technology in fibre manufacturing, and 4 per cent in bringing pilot-scale production to commercial scale.

Kazuki Morise: Our company has invested and keeps investing in R&D since 1931 and this brought us to be the sole producer of this amazing fibre (Bemberg). We believe that the transparency of the supply chain together with a stronger and-first of all-clearer communication about new smart certified values (for example use of water, chemicals, energy, ethical policies, etc) is fundamental for consumers to judge and value products in a more conscious way. Sustainability means integrating, adding a new dimension of quality/performance/value to a product. The next level is to inject new features: Bemberg highlights how a fibre can offer preciousness, performance and responsibility at the same time.

Robert Jarausch: Our usual spread was that we would invest around 25 per cent back into R&D. In 2020, we already had the carbon print of the new fibre in our drawers, but we had not planned to launch it during the year to be honest. We knew we could do something against the viruses, but virus was not such a hot topic in the beginning of 2020. We took it out when the pandemic started and even tried to make it faster. So last year we went up with our investment up to 30 per cent into R&D because we wanted to speed it up.

SY Huang: About 8-10 per cent of the turnover has been invested in R&D research since 2010. From now on, 70 per cent of investment will go into green development, including garment recycling, ocean-bound recycled bottles, advanced recycling technologies. The other 30 per cent will go into recycling-based performance fibres such as Saya fresh/stretch/microfibre and more. Aside from that, in response to our customers' requests we are currently working on different green polymers as well. PBAT, a biodegradable polymer, has been developed to meet the highest standards.

Marina Crnoja-Cosic: We have been investing a significant proportion of our turnover in the development of new fibres and applications for years and continue to do so. In addition to the financial investment, we have proven our commitment to the further development of our fibres by creating the new division New Business Development in summer 2020.

Kirsi Terho: We are a technology startup, and our technology is all about fibre development and innovation. This being the case, our entire R&D spend-more or less-has gone to developing and refining our cellulose carbamate fibre technology and preparing it for commercialisation. We've already invested nearly €30 million into the development of our current technology, and innovation remains at the core of what we do. And while our technology for fibre-to-fibre regeneration using textile waste is ready to be scaled, we are already also refining the process for creating cellulose carbamate fibre out of other cellulose-rich waste streams like cardboard or paper.

Ruth Farrell: We have recently announced the Naia sustainability goals. By 2025, Eastman Naia plans to invest more than 75 per cent of the textiles R&D resources in circular solutions.

Gianni Corso: MIC's investment share in sustainability is getting more and more relevant: MIC will double its investments in R&D as we will indicate in our Sustainability EP&L next year and we are just about to start to enlarge this concept to our human resources as well.

This article was first published in the March 2021 edition of the print magazine.

Published on: 27/05/2021

DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.