Pampers Cruisers Dry Max: High SAP, Low Pulp diapers

Mark Bolyen, Manager, Nonwovens, Marketing Technology Service, Inc. (USA) has looked in detail at Pampers Cruisers Dry Max and described the construction and his test results:

·         It is not a pulpless diaper.  The curly pulp acquisition layer contributes to the total absorbency.

·         It weighs ~34 gms and is 0.76 cms thick.

·         Much of the high performance comes from the permeability of the SAP, and the wicking in the curly pulp layer.

·         Mannequin testing in comparison with other Pampers and Huggies diapers showed:

o    Absorbency before leakage – stomach position – Dry Max came second to Huggies Overnights.

o    Absorbency before leakage – back position – Dry Max came 10^th,  Huggies Overnights came 9^th.

o    Rewet: Dry Max came 5^th.

Other constructions (than Dry Max) which work well at high SAP loadings were tissue/SAP sandwiches with ADL, synthetic fibre/SAP sandwiches with ADL, air-laid SAP composites with ADL, and CoForm cores with ADL.  SAP selection was key: chemistry, X-linking, size, permeability and whether layered or blended all being important construction variables.

For homogeneous blends of pulp and SAP, 37% SAP works best for absorbency; more SAP giving less total absorbency.  Traditional SAP’s work better than high permeability SAPs.

Andritz Kusters Wet-Finishing for Diaper Spunbond

Tobias Schafer, Head of Sales for Andritz Kusters (Germany) commenced with market data for the Arab Maghreb Union (Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco and Mauretania), a region of MENA with 1.54 million babies born per year, mainly in Morocco and Algeria.  The birth rate is however declining.  

The diaper market is 55% penetrated with a potential of between 7 billion (according to John Starr) or 8.55 billion (according to EDANA) diapers/year.

Diaper performance is related to multiple insult strike-through times, wet-back and runoff from the coverstock.  These in turn are controlled by oil pick up in the hydrophobic finishing of the coverstock, a process which spreads 10 litres of finish over an area on nonwoven the size of a football pitch. Andritz have developed a new kiss roll applicator system with heated rollers for single or 2-sided coating.  Metered uptake and automatic concentration control guarantees precise wet pick up.  


Because of the air turbulence created by the fast moving spunbond in the kiss roll system a mesh structure is used over the rolls to reduce turbulence induced variations.  The new drum drier has two stages to allow hotter operation at the inlet side.  In-line oil uptake measurement with feedback to kiss roll speeds allows the  wet pick up to be controlled as line speed increases.

(from EDANA Middle East Symposium  - Dubai - 14th and 15th Feb 2012)

Stentering Nonwovens

Bernd Can, Sales Manager, Bruckner Textile Technologies (Germany) explained how their expertise in building heat setting machinery for textiles could be used to improve the performance of spunbond nonwovens, especially for geotextiles.  The key benefits of heat-setting spunbonds on a stenter rather than calendering were:

·    Ability to vary basis weight up or down by controlled shrinkage or       stretching in either or both of the MD and CD directions.

·         Increased strength.

·         Better MD/CD balance.

·         Improved resilience.

·         Better control of bico melting.

·         Contactless heating system: no melting on hot surfaces, no cleaning.

·         Fabric widths infinitely adjustable up to the machine width (i.e. up to 7m)

Temperature variations in the hot air ovens were minimised by Vent-Jet gas/air mixing technology and alternating up/down draught zones along the length of the oven.  This “Counter Air Flow” reduced temperature variations down to +/- 1% compared with +/-5% in a conventional stenter.

Bruckner was also able to provide belt systems for bonding high loft webs up to 30mm thick.  These belt systems could fuse ADL fabrics at 200m/min and dry spunlace fabrics at up to 500m/min.  They could also apply treatments to and dry SMS fabrics, but all these belt systems required more floor space than the current machinery.


(from EDANA Middle East Symposium  - Dubai - 14th and 15th Feb 2012)

African Fibres for Nonwovens?

Prof. Mohamed Ben Hassen, ISET (Tunisia) dealt with the possible uses of natural fibres other than cotton or woodpulp.  Jute was the largest with 50% of the market, followed by coco- fibre (16%), flax (14%), kenaf (7%) sisal ( 6%), ramie (4%), abaca (2%) and hemp (1%).  The Middle East and North Africa region was particularly rich in palm and alfa fibre.  Palm was being used in carpets, baskets, bags, cords, mattresses and hats.  Alfa was a source of papermaking fibre after chemical extraction (NaOH and NaOCl) and pulping.  It could also be carded and needlepunched into nonwovens for composite reinforcement and waddings.

(from EDANA Middle East Symposium  - Dubai - 14th and 15th Feb 2012)

A Vision of the Future from Unicharm Gulf Hygienic

Mahdy Katbe, Executive Director of Unicharm Gulf Hygienic (Saudi Arabia) presented a thought provoking paper ranging rapidly across social, political and economic factors and their effect on the World, it’s nations, organisations, families and individuals.  Hardcopy was unavailable at the time of writing, but the following points were notable:

• Traditional education systems are becoming obsolete
• Digital Natives (those born after 1985) are able to educate themselves via the world wide web. (Digital Immigrants are those born before 1985)
• Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon together turnover $800bn and are truly global.
• Capitalism has failed to provide the right balance of economic and social values.
• We are deeply in debt and borrowing from future generations.
• Traditional corporations rate their economic value more highly than their social value.  These must carry equal weight in future.
• Social Key Performance Indicators will in future need to be embedded in corporate values.

This was an excellent Keynote presentation and this summary would have been more informative had a copy of the presentation or its slides been made available to EDANA.


(From EDANA Middle East Symposium - Dubai - Feb 2012)

Diaper Opportunities in Africa and the Middle East

Michel Verstraeten, Business Development Manager (MEA) for Henkel (Italy) enthused about the prospects for diapers in the Middle East and Africa as a whole. About a third of the world’s babies are born in this region, and the 15 countries with the highest birth rate are all in Africa. MEA thus has the highest unrealised diaper potential, and the key to realising it is identifying where the disposable income will reach the critical level for diaper use.

Mapping diaper penetration against GDP/Capita corrected for PPP (purchasing power parity) shows that a GDP/C-PPP of US$5000 equates to 20% diaper penetration throughout the MEA region. For the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region $15,000 equates to 50% penetration, and for South America, $10,000 equates to 50% diaper penetration.

The threshold for commencement of baby diaper usage is a GDP/C-PPP of around $3500/year. As this figure moves up through $5000 to $10000 the diaper market grows at 20% CAGR, this extreme rate lasting for 5-7 years.  From $10000 to $15000 growth slows and penetration levels out at about 75-80%.

Currently in MEA, country GDP/C-PPP ranges from $2500 to $8000 and 500,000 babies per year are being born.  Short term, MENA, South Africa and Angola are the main opportunities to focus on.  Longer term, Nigeria (“Eldorado” - 20bn diapers/year potential!), Ghana (2.5bn/year) and Ethiopia (4bn/year) are showing strong GDP growth, but Ethiopia is Very Long Term.

(from EDANA Middle East Symposium  - Dubai - 14th and 15th Feb 2012)

Low Count Diaper Packs from Fameccanica

Allesandro D'Andrea, Marketing Manager, Fameccanica Data (Italy) saw increasing demand for low count packs of hygienic disposables in emerging economies where minimal outlay per pack would encourage users to try the new products.  Here small independent stores were currently breaking open larger packs and selling the products singly.  He also saw potential in developed economies where “daily packs” of diapers and femcare could improve hygiene and be easy to carry around.

Examples now visible in stores included:

• 1-packs of P&G Pampers pants in Indonesia.
• Unicharm had 2 or 3 packs of pant diapers in the Indonesian market (Mamy Poko Pants)  
• Local producer Softex were making 1 and 3 packs of “Sweety” diapers also in Indonesia.

• Germany had 2-packs of diapers in sizes 3,4,and 5.  (“Beauty Baby”)
• “Lines e”, the Italian brand of Always Infinity was being sold in 2-pack for      trial.
• SCA “Libero” swim-pants were available in 6-packs in Hungary.
• KC were selling changing pads in 4’s in the USA.
• P&G were selling femcare in 2-packs in China and Unicharm had 4,5 and 6 packs.

Production lines optimised for high-count packs have to operate uneconomically slowly to make low-count packs so low count packs are often produced by manually repacking diapers from high count packs.  Fameccanica have now developed a low-count module to fit in a high count line so that product can be diverted into the low-count system and packed automatically as required.

(from EDANA Middle East Symposium  - Dubai - 14th and 15th Feb 2012)

Nano-web Filters from India

Mahammad Safikur Rahman and Anil Kumar (above) of ATIRA (India) were developing high efficiency nonwoven filters using layers of nanofibre webs.  Ahmendabad’s Textile Industry Research Association had acquired a 1m wide Elmarco Nano-Spider pilot line as part of a strategy to become a center of excellence for nanofibres in India.  They were developing face-masks, cigarette filters, water filters and automotive air filters from multilayer structures of spunbonds, meltblowns and card webs with nanofibre webs sandwiched between layers as necessary.  

The nanofibre webs were being electrospun from PA6 and polyvinyl alcohol at between 20nm and 500nm diameter and laid directly onto spunbond PP prior to further lamination.  The permeability and thickness of the nanofibre layer was being controlled by varying the line speed between 0.5 and 2.5 m/min.  Automotive air filter paper had been coated with nanowebs at 1-9m/min giving air permeabilities varying from 236 l/m2/sec (untreated) down to 101 l/m2/sec at 1m/min coating speed.

Additional functionality could be met by adding carbon (active or nanotubes), silver or other chemicals to the electrospinning dope.  Barrier fabrics for medical use (SNS fabrics) had been developed with 2.5 times the water vapour permeability, yet 2.5 times the particle retention efficiency and 99.9% antibacterial and antiviral activity.

ATIRA, set up with government and private funding, welcomes collaboration with the world’s nonwovens industry.


(from EDANA Middle East Symposium  - Dubai - 14th and 15th Feb 2012)

EDANA's 2020 Vision

(Abby Bailey: photo by EDANA)

Abby Bailey, EDANA’s Marketing and Communications Director provided information from the “Nonwovens Vision 2020” study.  Key points were:

Globalisation will accelerate and economic power will move east.  Nonwoven markets will polarise with high volumes but low margins being realised from the emerging middle classes, while the developed world will need high margin, low volume products.

Sustainability will be the concern of the decade with a larger and wealthier global population growing more concerned about climate change and the release of GHGs. Nonwovens will benefit from sustainability opportunities in some sectors e.g. crop protection. Conspicuous consumerism is giving way to considered consumerism and prolonging the life of consumer products through exchange and on-line trading will increase.

Innovation is the key to addressing the other sustainability issues.  It will become more open and prolific and like the markets, will move east.  It will also have to deal with reduced raw material availability and the increasing...

Medical, Geotextile and Filtration Nonwovens from SPIC

Kalicharan Sharma , Quality Manager, SPIC Nonwovens (Jordan) said hospital acquired infections were skyrocketing and were now killing more people every year than AIDS, breast cancer and car accidents combined.  HAI’s were costing $45 bn and 100,000 lives per year, and the problem was exacerbated by increasing levels of antibiotic resistance and more rapid spread of infections due to international travel.  Infection control needed improvement and nonwovens had a key role to play due to their well known barrier property and cost advantages over textile alternatives. 

Barrier properties could be further improved by using finer fibres, new coatings and fibre additives. Antimicrobials or expensive wound care chemicals could be added and be concentrated in the skin polymers of bico fibres cost effectively.  

The medical nonwoven disposables market was expected to exceed $19bn by 2015 driven by expansion of health care in emerging economies, new advanced materials and the ageing populations.  MENA is expected to show higher growth rates than the EU. 

Filtration nonwovens have evolved from replacements for paper and textiles to become the media of choice.  Future use of nanofibres and polymer surfaces tuned to absorb and retain specific molecular contaminants will lead to new products for drinking water production, effluent clean-up and air purification.  The global market for nonwoven filter media will show CAGR’s of 7%, increasing its value to $3.5bn by 2015.  Asia-Pacific will show the strongest growth with the US and the EU being below average.

Rapid developments of infrastructure in the emerging economies have led to a huge new demand for geotextile nonwovens in highway, railway, water storage, sea-defences and airport construction especially in MENA.  Demand from the BRICs is growing, led by a 35% pa geotextile growth rate in China, and even the EU market is showing signs of recovery.  60% of the world’s geotextiles are now used in China.


(from EDANA Middle East Symposium  - Dubai - 14th and 15th Feb 2012)

Softness and Stretch from Dow Chemicals

Gerd Claasen, Global Application and Technology Leader, Hygiene and Medical for Dow Chemicals (Switzerland) reviewed the routes to the softer and more elastic polymers needed to make softer and more elastic topsheets and backsheets.  The long term target was to allow underwear-style diapers to be made without elastication. 

Adding Dow’s Versify™ modifier to PP used on monocomponent spunbond lines allowed improved softness, drape and extensibility.  Further improvements followed making a bico spunbond with Dow’s Aspun™ polyethylene sheath, but the ultimate in softness came from spinning monocomponent Aspun™ spunbonds.  However Aspun™ nonwovens were a third the strength of PP, had poor abrasion resistance and a very narrow thermal bonding window.  

Improvements to Aspun™ to reduce degradation (chain scission) at high shear are sought.  Asked if there were any prototypes of elastic-free underwear style diapers, Mr Claasen said there weren’t.  The whole value chain had to get together with their best products before a prototype could be made.  He thought this was likely to happen first in adult incontinence where the user benefits directly from the extra comfort and discretion.

(from EDANA Middle East Symposium  - Dubai - 14th and 15th Feb 2012)

Raw Materials Update from Lenzing

Geoff Collins, Head of Sales, Lenzing Asia (Hong Kong) described how Textiles, Cotton and China were the main factors responsible for the “crisis” affecting the price and availability of man-made cellulosic fibres for nonwovens.  Until the end of 2010 the Cotton A index and Chinese viscose price varied between $1.2 and $2.6/kg with viscose moving in unison with cotton and being roughly 25-50% more expensive.  In early 2011, Cotton A spiked to $5.3/kg due to poor Chinese and Pakistani cotton crops and the resulting increased demand for viscose pushed the viscose price to $4/kg.  Normality returned by August 2011 with both prices fluctuating around gently upward but converging trends line if the spikes were ignored.  By the end of 2011 cotton A and Chinese viscose were both around $2.2/kg.

Lenzing Sales Growth

Since 2000 cellulosics (including cotton) and synthetics had grown at similar rates to give a global per capita cellulosics usage of 4.7kg/year and 7.1kg for synthetics. Now population was above 7bn and growing at 80mn per year.  Furthermore the 11.8kg per capita total was an average with the developed world using above 25 kgs and the rapidly growing economies of China, India and Brazil using less than 8kg.  As wealth and hence the fibre consumption in these countries rose to reach Western levels, Lenzing were projecting the demand for cellulosics to almost double by 2030 and require an extra annual capacity of ~20million tonnes. Cotton production would be constrained by competition with food production and the inability to further increase yield per hectare.  So, man-made cellulosics would have to fill what Mr Collins now called the Sustainable Fibres Gap* and the construction of many more large viscose and lyocell plants could be justified.

*originally The Comfort Gap
see also www.tencel-lyocell.com

(from EDANA Middle East Symposium  - Dubai - 14th and 15th Feb 2012)

Medical and Hygiene Products in India

  Samir Gupta, MD Business Coordination House (India)  reported 8.6% GDP growth for India in 2010-11 and within this the industrial sector was growing at 8.1%.  Urbanisation of the 1.2 billion inhabitants has increased to 30% and is expected to reach 41% by 2021.  Population growth is higher than China’s and on current trends India’s population will overtake China’s by 2035.  While average income is low (€725/year) there are 176 million people in the Middle and Rich classes and this group is expected to reach 300 million by 2016.  The resultant opportunities for nonwovens are amazing:

Organized retail outlet turnover has doubled in the last 2 years to US$40bn and will grow at 35-40% CAGR to reach $200bn by 2017.  After food products (43% of FMCG) , Personal Care (22%) is the largest FMCG sector.  Others to note are Fabric Care (12%), Hair Care (8%), and Baby Care (2%).  Some PC sectors are now growing at 40% CAGR.

India emerging as next business destination

Increasing health consciousness, top class private hospital chains and increasing medical tourism are driving growth in the Medical sector...

From Diapers to Underwear

Jorg Harren, R and D Director, Evonik Industries (Germany) quoted John Starr 2010 data to show that 65% of the available diaper market is now in the developing world.

• 47bn diapers/yr are used in Western Europe, North America and Japan, this representing 94% penetration.
• 51bn d/yr in the Middle East, South/Central America and other Asia/Pacific represents 41% penetration.
• 38bn d/yr in Central and Eastern Europe, Africa, China, India and Rest of Asia, represents only 9% penetration.

Global diaper market growth averaged 4.4% but MENA (where most countries birth-rate is above the global average of 2.5) averaged 6.4%. Growth in Developed markets was just 0.8%/year compared with 4.7% in developing markets and 8.1% in underdeveloped markets. 

The evolution towards ultrathin, underwear-style diapers which had been occurring since the 1980’s was possible because superabsorbents had been developed to do more than just absorb.  Removal of fluff pulp needed permeable SAPs but these allowed improvements in the sustainability of the diaper.  Diapers weighed 40gms at 35/65 SAP/Fluff and this came down to 31gms at 70/30 SAP/Fluff.  The 31gm diaper cost 75% of the older 40gm diaper based on the SAP/Fluff exchange alone.  Potential changes in other raw materials (ADL, core wrap etc) were not included.  Additional savings would accrue from less hammer-mill energy, less packaging and lower transport/storage costs. 

Evonik will be starting up an 80000t/y SAP plant in Al Jubail in Q4 2013.

Asked about the importance of ADL and topsheet in the performance of ultrathin diapers, Mr Harren said innovation would be needed in these areas as the move to fluffless diapers progressed.


(From EDANA Middle East Symposium  - Dubai - 14th and 15th Feb 2012)

Hygiene Products for MENA

Mohammed Minawi, General Manager - Research for IPSOS (Jordan) presented data from a consumer survey commissioned by EDANA specifically for this conference.  1500 females in the 18-45 age group from the top 2 or 3 cities in each of 5 MENA countries (Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Morocco)  were subjects for “Qualitative Consumer Immersions” in 3 sectors - Diapers, Fem-Care and Wipes.)

“Consumer and Industry Alignment” was gauged from answers to the questions:

“Do I care about the brand names in this sector”

Brand names proved very important for Diapers and Femcare, less so for Wipes, but even wipes ranked well above facial and toilet tissues. Diaper brands were most important in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, followed by Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and Lebanon in that order.  However even Lebanon’s average score was above the average for all brands.

Fem-Care brands were most important in Egypt, followed by KSA, Jordan, Morocco and Lebanon.  Here Lebanon was below the average for all brands. Wet-wipe brands were most important in KSA, followed by Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and Lebanon.  Here Jordan and Lebanon were below the all-brands average.

“Do I actively seek information about these products”

Diaper engagement was best in Egypt, Femcare engagement was best in KSA, and Wipes engagement was best in KSA followed by Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Morocco. Overall, consumers were judged insufficiently engaged to seek information, but Femcare scored highest followed by diapers and wipes.

Brand selection is mainly based on Quality across all sectors.  For diapers, 45.6% of the consumers had never tried more than one brand and the brand was the main factor in choosing.  For Fem-Care, 47.6% had never tried more than one brand.  Product length, thickness and absorption came ahead of the brand name.

For Wipes, 50.6% of users had never tried more than one brand. The fragrance was a key factor in selection...

EDANA Middle East Symposium - Dubai - 14th and 15th Feb 2012

Introduction

40 companies displayed their products in the Exhibition and over 275 delegates from 151 countries attended this, the third EDANA Middle East Conference and the second to be held in the Jumeirah Beach resort in a hot and sunny Dubai February.  While only about half the delegates appeared to be in the conference at any one time, it was the exhibition rather than the baking beach that appeared to be the main alternative attraction.

EU and MENA Nonwovens

Pierre Wiertz, General Manager EDANA (Belgium) presented Jaques Prigneaux’s paper on trends in the nonwovens market based on detailed replies from 82 members:

In 2010, EU27 tonnage recovered to 1.785 million. Area produced, which did not decline in 2009, moved on to 54.2bn sq metres and if 2010 is compared with 2008, total tonnage was up by about 3.5%.  Notably, wet-laid and dry-lay spunlace did not regain the losses of 2008-9.  Apparel and Home nonwovens failed to recover to 2008 levels, and Hygiene only just made it into positive territory.  Medical showed the strongest recovery.

162,000 tonnes of staple-fibre nonwovens and 136,000 tonnes of spunmelt nonwovens were produced in MENA in 2010, this being expected to rise...

EDANA Middle East Symposium 2012

Edited highlights of our report on the EDANA Middle East Symposium (14th -15th Feb 2012) are now available in Nonwovens Report International magazine - Issue 2 2012.  The full report will be posted here in due course, but in the meantime here are some photos from the occasion. 

While the conference hotel was at the Jumeirah Beach Resort, it was not in that resort's costly Burj al Arab hotel illustrated in the NRI article, but in the more popular and reasonable Jumeirah Beach Hotel illustrated below: