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...

Snapshots from Chicago - WoW 2012

Rory Homes, President INDA, opens WOW 2012 and provides the latest statistics on the Industrial Wipes Market

Jessica Franken, Director of Government Affairs INDA reviews 27 years of lobbying to get the EPA to level the playing field between disposable wipes and laundered shop towels.  The end is in sight.

Ian Bell, Head of Tissue, Hygiene and Home Care Research, Euromonitor International describes the EU Wipe market trends and predicts how these might trigger further growth in the US Wipes market

A full report on these and all the other speeches at WOW will appear here and in Nonwovens Report International Magazine in due course.

INDA Conference WOWed the Wipes Industry

Annual World of Wipes (WOW)® Conference in Chicago focused on global wipes issues and opportunities, along with the presentation of World of Wipes Innovation Award™

CARY, N.C. — June 12, 2012 — Executives from all links in the wipes supply chain gathered earlier this month in Chicago, Illinois for the 2012 World of Wipes (WOW) International Conference, organized by INDA, Association of the Nonwoven Fabrics Industry.

In addition to three full days of education seminars and networking at the Hotel InterContinental from June 5-7, WOW 2012 featured the presentation of the prestigious World of Wipes Innovation Award, which is given annually to encourage innovative processes and products anywhere along the wipes’ value chain. The 2012 World of Wipes Innovation Award was awarded to Sani Professional® for its Table Turners® No-Rinse Sanitizing Wipes.

Among the other highlights of the 2012 WOW Conference:

INDA's World of Wipes Innovation Award 2012 goes to...

Sani Professional Brand Table Turners

Table Turners No-Rinse Sanitizing Wipes were developed in tandem with a unique carrying and dispensing system, the Triple Take™Dispenser, that holds the wipes, provides portability of use and hands-free disposal of used wipes.

More information can be found at http://www.pdipdi.com/assets/tech_data/B_73363_TableTurnersTDBcdlr-634691368704930872.pdf and a full report of this meeting in Chicago last week will appear here and in Nonwovens Report International in due course.

Ingeo™ Biopolymer Becomes Cradle to Cradle CertifiedCM

  Safety to human and environmental health, design for future use cycles, and sustainable manufacturing processes among certification criteria

            MINNETONKA, Minn., May 24, 2012 — NatureWorks’ Ingeo^™ biopolymer, made from plants, not oil, is the first product of its kind to become Cradle to Cradle Certified^CM Silver by the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute.

            Cradle to Cradle Certified^CM is a multi-attribute program that assesses products for safety to human and environmental health, design for future use cycles, and sustainable manufacturing processes. The program provides guidelines to help businesses implement the Cradle to Cradle^® framework, which focuses on using safe materials that can be disassembled and reused as technical nutrients or composted as biological nutrients.

INDA's Fifth World of Wipes gets underway

Four finalists have been selected to compete for the World of Wipes Innovation Award competition being held as part of the annual World of Wipes (WOW) Conference, set for June 5-7 at the Hotel InterContinental in Chicago, Illinois.

The annual WOW Conference, organized by INDA, Association of the Nonwoven Fabrics Industry, is devoted solely to wipes, with a concentration on substrates, active ingredients, packaging, market metrics, industry challenges and market opportunities, particularly in Asia and Europe. The World of Wipes Innovation Award recognizes and rewards the industry members who bring new and value-added processes and products to the wipes market.

The four finalists, chosen from products nominated by the industry, are:

Paper of the Year Award 2011

Our Paper of the Year Award goes to:

Michael Harder of the Office of Interdisciplinary Sciences (Germany) who argued the case for using the developing science of complex systems to help understand the interactions now occurring in the financial system.  In a most thought-provoking presentation he showed how the new science can explain the inter-connectedness of the current crises of debt, inflation, population movements, and poverty and suggested the need for massive changes in the way we work, our currencies, production methods and Eurozone politics.  Along the way, the following points were notable:

·         Modern physics suggests the world comprises logical “islands” in an ocean of chaos and probability.  We prefer the logical and believe in causality, which leads to specialization. 

·         Specialists don’t recognize the wider reality.  They feel their island is the only correct one,  whereas many correct islands must be connected to perceive reality. This requires more complex thinking than we’re used to.

·         Order and Chaos are the key “attractors” with entropy leading to chaos and action leading to order. 

·         Ordered systems tend to deteriorate into chaotic systems and the chaotic tends to order.  The result is a natural balance best described by Darwinism.

·         “Darwinism is essential for any company management.”

However, reward of the fittest eventually leads to a growing population hitting system boundaries where the favoured species runs into the limits of its environment and risks crashing if it fails to correct its growth and adapt. (“Don’t try to work against nature”)

The global economy hit its system boundary about 25 years ago when we started consuming more resources than the planet could sustainably provide. 

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:

Biopolymer World

Q. When is a biopolymer not a biopolymer: A. When it’s a polyolefin.

 

Last month’s Biopolymer World Conference in Venice was a “first” and a great way to catch up with the latest developments in biopolymers, an increasingly important source of materials for nonwovens now that fossil fuels are getting pricy.  Ahead of the meeting it was clear that the dictionary definition of biopolymer was being adapted for marketing purposes but we were nevertheless surprised to discover how different the modern “biopolymer” had become.

Biopolymer used to refer to a macromolecule produced by living organisms the key examples being cellulose, chitin, proteins, and DNA.  Plant cellulose is the most important biopolymer, growing naturally in enormous quantities (~100 billion tonnes/year) most of which ultimately biodegrades to provide the raw materials for the next generation of plants.  In fact biodegradability and biopolymers are linked by more than the “bio” prefix because the carbon cycle of life requires all living things to decompose back to their building blocks for reuse.  It was therefore reasonable to begin to describe the new synthetic biodegradable polymers as bio-polymers even though they did not originate in nature.

However imagine our surprise when over dinner at the conference a delegate expressed the view that polyethylene was now the most important biopolymer on the planet!  The logic for this was impeccable...

Biopolymer World Congress Photos

NH Laguna Hotel - Venice-Mestre

Ian Sinclair - Biopolymer World