We focus on wearable tech, automation, energy harnessing, low carbon manufacturing
The Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel (HKRITA) was established in April 2006 to enhance Hong Kong's cutting edge. HKRITA has the funding support from Innovation and Technology Commission under the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government. HKRITA is also supported by institutes, companies and associations in the textile and clothing industry in Hong Kong, mainland China and other countries. CEO Edwin Keh converses about the latest and future projects at the institute.
What is your take on smart clothing? What will be the next big thing in this domain?
We have something called the dumb system; there is nothing smart to the clothes that we wear. Everything else that we use has become smarter and smarter. All our electronics from telephones to watches have become smart. Everything portable that we use is more intelligent and smarter. The challenge for the apparel industry is multiple.
First, we need to incorporate a platform on which we can build a technology that can help us be more aware. We need to have clothing that can educate and inform by adding sensors and integrating systems into our apparel. That is a big challenge because it blurs the line between hardware and software - what is apparel and what is electronics and what are the other supporting technologies in the industry that we need to be good at for this to work. So, there are a lot of opportunities in this area. But I think the first movers will win significantly in this race and some brands will move fast enough and have good opportunities and a fair market share.
What areas of research in textile and apparel does HKRITA focus on?
HKRITA is an applied research centre and is not publicly-funded. We focus on four main domains: fibres and textile materials; manufacturing, i.e. machinery and technology; testing standards, methods and equipment; and supply chain solutions.
Three broad themes cover those domains. The first is sustainability, which includes how to make things greener, cut waste out of the industry, and water and energy conservation. Here we conduct research on waterless technologies, waste treatment, and low energy consumption and in general, on how to make things more benign.
Our second theme is improving the efficiency and competitiveness of the industry. We work on finding new supply chain solutions and anything that could help the industry get better, faster and more cost-effective.
The third theme is working in line with helping the industry evolve with society. For instance, healthcare, community care, elderly care, self-cleaning and self-sterile materials and things that are protective in nature. The reason why we are interested in this is the result of a large survey that we conducted in the industry a while back. We basically went and asked the stakeholders about the challenges they faced and the areas they would want more help with. And these areas came up over and over again. All of our projects come from these major themes, when we talk of circularity and recycling.
What have been the top three research studies and innovations at the institute in the last decade?
Let me tell you about our award-winning projects that we received recognition for. Our new technology that won a lot of recognition is a new way of spinning cotton whether it is long or short or of lower quality. But the way we spin it makes it appear more luxurious and gives an improved hand-feel without mercerizing it. It is not yet widely known and used in the industry.
A couple of years ago we won a significant award for the HTT system, a hand touch system for fabrics. It is a multi-sensor system that takes the fabric and gives numeric value to hand-feel. This is to mimic the way that somebody would touch the fabric that will give a number to how much he would transfer in terms of friction and the other characteristics associated with it to give a consistent numeric value. That was very popular and useful especially for manufacturers who are working in multiple locations and deal with very long global supply chains. People were able to talk about hand feel and check the product in an objective quantifiable manner rather in a subjective way, which is very important.
This year we have several award winning projects. Our series of recycling projects has received a lot of attention. We have been able to develop a hydro thermal system. We basically use heat and pressure only to pull polyester and cotton. The advantage of our system that we announced last year is that the same process separates the material. Polyester comes out in a recovered fibre form and so it does not have to be melted and we can switch them back into the fibre. Moreover, it is cost-effective and a practical recycling method. The other breakthrough is that it is such a gentle and benign process, it does not damage the fibres, the molecular weight of the polyester is the same and cotton maintains a lot of its original performance characteristics. The announcement was done last year and now we are in the process of industrialising the project.
What major research projects is the institute currently working on? Can you please share a few details?
Well, you just touched on one - wearable technology. The challenge here is with energy management of the wearables. We are working on battery technology and energy harnessing. We are also working on lot of waterless technology and we hope to achieve a breakthrough in the next couple of years. Besides that, there are projects on automation in the more complex parts of what we do like computerised and intelligent sewing along with fast and accurate ways of operations. These are easy to say but very hard to do. We continue with sustainability too in terms of circularity, low energy and low carbon manufacturing.
What new fibres and fabrics are researchers experimenting with?
We are doing lot of work around replacement of petroleum-based synthetics. Cellulose as a new resource of plastics is the area we are working on. We are also working on new types of green material, which are things we don't think of commonly as a source of fabric like agricultural waste, recycling of material and biodegradable material. We are working in a lot of different directions. We also have a huge area of work on high performance material for industrial applications also.
Which regions globally are pro-active when it comes to experimenting with new textile and garmenting technologies?
We have so far found interest globally. But in the consuming countries, because of consumer pressure and interests, we see lot of immediate interest from Europe and the United States. This is because the brands and companies in general are under lot of retail pressure to demonstrate sustainable products and socially acceptable supply chains. That is to say from one extreme, which is at the retail customer level. Then there are other interests from the raw material processing countries, because that is where a lot of the waste water and harsh chemicals are being used in the process. If you think about this, then the process of making of garments is actually quite benign. So, on both the extremes of the supply chain, we have been applying our interest.
What are your thoughts on Industry 4.0 in textile and apparel industry? Where is the adoption rate higher - ginning, spinning, weaving, knitting, processing, cutting & stitching and packaging?
The application of Industry 4.0 in the fashion industry from the manufacturing point is low in terms of technology used. It is still labour-intensive as compared to the heavy industry, which is more capital intensive and so automation came a lot earlier. I think players in the fashion industry are late adopters. That is because for so long there has been much emphasis on the art and not enough on the science. It all depends on how designers see things. It has always been hard to quantify and make this into an extended process that is fast, responsive and scientifically more disciplined.
But I think with globalisation of the fashion market, especially in emerging countries like China and India, with the challenges of the apparel market being crowded, oversupplied, and the demand for stability, the marketplace seems to be more coefficient and makes less waste in the process.
There are more and more industry 4.0 ideas coming into the fashion industry. But the challenge for the industry is not just the physical supply chain but much more about how we use data and innovation in the supply chain. We need to make more predictive analytics and make sure that it gets shared on the supply chain and remains transparent. Also, for Industry 4.0, the premise is on computerisation and automation, which is still low in terms of penetration. So for many parts of the apparel industry, it is not so much about switching to industry 4.0 but catching up with Industry 3.0.
How many patents does the institute hold so far?
We hold about 200 patents. The pace of innovation is moving so rapidly that in most cases by the time we file the patent, we are already working on that. So, the patent system is not keeping up with the pace of innovation. We think that going forward there will be hybrid or some critical pattern applications in the future.
Do you have any groundbreaking innovations to be disclosed this year?
This year, first of all we want to focus on industrial scale innovations, a lot of which we have done in the past at lab scale. We want to get that into the markeplace faster. We want reasonable and practical business cases behind them. Things that are new need to have the market for them and have to be priced, so that the market considers those reasonable.
We will also try some new interfaces with consumers with more and more intermediation in the marketplace, in which a lot of things connect directly to consumer. We want to try and see if we can have a consumer-to-business (C2B) model, where the consumer is driving everything, i.e., we don't make anything but we sell before we make the model. Then with digitisation, we want to see instead of selling clothes, can we sell concepts. These are the business models we will be looking at and in the fall of 2018, we will announce some of these. We will be opening stores in the real world to try and see how it works.
You are conducting some research with the H&M Foundation. Can you tell us about its progress?
The H&M Foundation and HKRITA entered into a four-year research agreement about two years ago to conduct a series of research around post-consumer recycling products. The most difficult challenge in the marketplace is to deal with things that are typically thrown away by customers or the things that are really hard to recycle because they are blended, dirty or damaged. The question is how we can find new and high-value uses for such things.
It is not a matter of how these things can be recycled but to up-cycle those and retain their values. We have announced a series of hydro-thermal results for separation of materials. This year, as we approach the middle of our research agreement, we will be focusing on commercialising the early research results just like what we do in the rest of the institute, and ideas that we have missed or results that are important; something we can refine and do better. There is a lot of work ahead in the next two years for us.
What is the focus on research by the government? How does the Hong Kong Government support research?
The Hong Kong Government has funded us under the innovation and technology fund. What they want us to do is to create a new road for Hong Kong. Hong Kong basically today does not manufacture; we did that 50 years back. Today, it is the logistic and banking hub. Therefore, what the government likes us to do is to add innovation role to all of this. We went from being manufacturers to the logistics hub and to the financial hub. Can we add value by being the innovation hub? In short, we have something that keeps Hong Kong as the strategic business hub.
For innovation and technology fund, I think, in round numbers the government funds about $ 4.5 billion. We are one of the four applied research centres that pull money from the innovation and technology fund. Basically, the government is happy to provide funds to us for most reasonable researches. We never have had any shortage of funding for research and overheads.
What is the strength of your research centre?
We are a hybrid model. We have about 60 people at the centre, about 20 administrators and 40 research scientists. We are also a funding agency for other research centres or universities. If we see something that is happening in the lab or the university, then we go and work there to fund their research for the next three to four years. For that effort we have about 300 research scientists in various labs. We have about 60 ongoing projects. The government lets us use half of the funds for supporting research abroad. We have funded research projects in universities in Japan, Australia and Hong Kong. We go wherever there is new science. We try to pick up 20-30 most strategic, important and urgent ideas every year and work on them.
Are you planning to expand your current capacity?
We are trying not to create too much overhead. We want to be as efficient as we can with our research fund. There is a lot of room for research but the challenge for us on one hand is to stay focused on critical topics and on the other hand, be aware of what the emerging challenges are and then pivot when the need arises. (HO)
