A resurgence of regenerated cellulosics.

Previously:
Introduction
Diaper Trends
Wipes and Femcare Trends
Raw material and Manufacturing Trends

Globalisation and Climate Change
Peak Oil?

The consumers view
Future Diaper Raw Materials

In the last 2 years, massive expansions in viscose production, and the pulp required to produce it have been announced – totalling in excess of half a million tonnes of new fibre. Surprisingly none of the expansion involves the more eco-friendly lyocell route. In the absence of this new capacity, viscose and lyocell prices have risen sharply and the market is currently undersupplied due to high demand in textiles as well as nonwovens. The world’s leading producer, Lenzing is enoying full production and good prices. 2007 will be its best year ever, and they are leading the expansion.

(Source: The Saurer Report 2006-7)

Research into cellulose and its derivatives is increasing. To take a few highlights from recent conferences:

• Processes potentially capable of giving low cost cellulosic nonwovens are now being evaluated on a pilot scale at TITK and Fraunhofer.
• At TITK, Lenzing and Nanoval are co-operating to produce a “melt-blown” version of lyocell using the Laval nozzle to split the fibres into micro-fibres.
• At Fraunhofer, Weyerhaeuser and Reicofil are using a 60 cm Reicofil melt-blowing nozzle as a spinnerette to produce spun-laid lyocell.
• These processes work with low-quality dope from paper-pulp and the cellulose can be more easily alloyed with high levels of other materials such as PP.
• Ionic liquids have made dopes with 20% cellulose from which Tencel-like fibres and alloys with other polymers have been spun on lyocell pilot equipment.
• 30% solutions of cellulose carbamate in NMMO have been converted to fibers with tenacities above 60 cN/tex. (These solutions are anisotropic above 20%)
• Cellulose nanofiber fiber webs for use in medicine and cosmetics have been produced by the surface culture of bacteria.
• Cellulose nanofiber webs made by electrospinning appear to have a total free absorbency of 2000 gms/gm.
• Work continues on the dissolution of enzyme degraded cellulose directly in caustic soda.

Could cellulosics really replace polypropylene as the workhorse fibre for disposable nonwovens?

As we have seen, the ecological logic is sound:

• Cellulose is the only really abundant fibre-forming polymer produced and disposed within the carbon cycle. (but don’t forget alginic acid and chitin remain to be fully exploited.)
• Pure cellulose in the form of cotton, grown organically maybe in Africa, has the least environmental impact of any fibre and would be a low-cost yet valuable crop.
• If cellulose must be grown on land which can not be used for food crops, it must first be pulped, dissolved and regenerated to form useable fibres.
• Numerous processes exist for making cellulosic fibres from biomass, and all are potentially carbon-neutral because the parts of the biomass unsuitable for including in the finished fibres can be used to power the pulping, dissolution and fibre spinning operations.
• Existing dry-lay, wet-lay and air-lay nonwoven process could convert these fibres into nonwovens provided hydroentanglement is the bonding system.
• Surface acetylation of cellulose fibres can allow some thermoplasticity for thermal bonding purposes if the extra small monetary and ecological expense can be justified. (Acetic acid is a by-product of the pulping operation.)
• Cellulose can be spunbonded, literally, in various ways to make self-bonded nonwovens, or spun laid where hydroentanglement would be the bonding mechanism of choice.
• Assembling finished disposables without the help of thermoplasticity would be tricky, but fabrics can be glued or even stitched together – by computer-controlled high pressure water needles - in the same way as these needles at even higher pressure are used as cutters.
• Cellulosic fibres can be converted into superabsorbents, and such products are already used in wound care. (Cellulosic nonwovens could be treated on one side to form a self-sealing breathable backsheet.)
• Cellulosic disposables would be fully compatible with sewage systems, especially if the fibres are short and lightly bonded, or if the products are shredded through a waste disposal unit attached to the toilet.

As an aside here, any biodegradable waste could be disposed of through shredders into the sewage system and anaerobically digested at the sewage farm to yield methane for power generation.

• Maybe as new infrastructure is developed and old infrastructure renewed, the installation of this option would take a load off landfill and the reduce the environmental costs of collecting and transporting rubbish from homes to landfill or aerobic composters.
• If organic matter – including urine and faeces – could be kept out of the solid waste, the collection of the remaining rubbish could be very infrequent.
• The life cycle analysis of the disposable diaper could be improved. Diapers would be credited not just with the energy generated from their mainly cellulose construction but also with that from the excrement they have saved from the landfill.

In Conclusion

For the last 40 years, the dramatic growth of the nonwovens and disposables industry has depended on increasing use of fossil reserves. Consumers have accepted convenience products based on unsustainable, non-biodegradable materials requiring landfill disposal. Climate change and its effects are changing consumers attitude to disposables and the continuing oil supply/demand imbalance will encourage a reversion to polymers from biomass. Flushable disposables based on cellulose would be sustainable, and recyclable to energy in sewage treatment.

Calvin Woodings

Future Diaper Raw Materials?

Previously:
Introduction
Diaper Trends
Wipes and Femcare Trends
Raw material and Manufacturing Trends

Globalisation and Climate Change
Peak Oil?

The consumers view

While synthetic polymers account for only a small percentage of the oil usage, and could be obtained from coal or tar more easily than could transportation fuels, they will become increasingly costly to a point where the use of natural polymers and their derivatives will become viable again. Furthermore as consumers demand ever-more low-carbon-footprint biodegradable products based on renewable raw materials the case for such a reversion to the natural will increase.
PLA?
Polylactic acid (an aliphatic polyester) has the undeniable advantage of low temperature thermoplasticity which makes it an excellent candidate for replacing polypropylene in existing nonwoven processes – whenever the price falls to parity with PP having taken the different polymer densities into account, i.e. on a cents per cubic centimetre basis. It currently sells at a premium into products where claims of “corn-based” “natural” , “sustainable” and “compostable” have value, and today this is mainly into packaging films and mouldings, wipes, coverstocks and textiles. The process used to make it does require more energy than a fossil-fuelled polyester and the current product alleviates this by carbon-offsetting. One could also argue that the naturalness associated with corn is compromised by its complete depolymerisation to dextrose followed by fermentation to lactic acid which is then polymerised to PLA. There is also the issue of the current process needing prime food growing acreage and intesive fertilisation. Future processes based on waste biomass will be significantly more sustainable in the long term.
Cotton?
Cotton is at the other end of the naturalness scale to PLA in that nature provides a finished fibre almost ready to be carded. Unfortunately current low-cost cotton production requires extensive petrochemotherapy and irrigation and current pricing depends on government subsidy. Furthermore, and unfortunately for nonwovens producers, it needs bleaching and special finishing if it is to be processed efficiently into absorbent products. The more attractive, sustainable and eco-friendly organic cotton with its lower yields even from irrigated agricultural land could remain far too costly and scarce for most nonwoven applications and for some time will be used primarily specialities and in high value fashion textiles. If however a subsidised expansion of organic cotton production could be part of some grander scheme, such as eliminating US cotton subsidies and reducing poverty in Africa then ethical cotton nonwovens could emerge as a more mainstream raw material. If future consumers realise that genetic modification is just a speeded up version of the natural process by which all life evolved, they may be more favourably disposed to the man-made version of GM now becoming capable of transforming our ability to live a carbon-neutral existence. Organic cotton production would be an immediate beneficiary of the new mind-set.
Other Cellulosics?
Genetic modification of trees and other biomass could likewise transform the quality and yield of cellulose from agriculture, and may even allow its efficient production from bacteria. For now, cellulose is produced in the cell walls of vegetation when sugars produced by chlorophyll-catalysed photosynthesis are polymerised by enzymes to form both lignin and cellulose. The industrial grade of cellulose used to make fibre comes from tree-farms, where specially chosen species can be grown from sapling to maturity in as little as 10 years. New trees can grow from the stumps of the cut trees, and this happens on marginal land, generally unsuitable for food crops and without the intensive use of fertilisers or pesticides. The best tree farms yield in excess of 2.5 tonnes of pure cellulose per acre per year. For comparison, cotton growing at its most intensive yields about 0.7 tonnes/acre and needs good soil. Using trees on an industrial scale can attract the wrath of environmentalists. This is of course no worse ecologically than non-intensive farming but it is important to put the usage of trees as a raw material into the correct perspective. Using very round numbers to gain an approximate impression of the impacts involved:· 100 billion tonnes of vegetation grow and decay annually on land. This represents about 12% of the planets total production of vegetation, the majority being produced in the oceans.
· 12% of this land-based vegetation is in the form of wood (trees).
· Of this annual growth of 12 billion tonnes of wood, a maximum of 4 billion tonnes is removed by man. Half of this is burnt, either as fuel or to clear land for agriculture. The other half is used by Industry. (Compare this with 6 billion tonnes of fossil reserves "mined" and burned each year.)
· Of the 2 billion tonnes of wood used by industry, half becomes timber in saw mills, and half is used raw.
· Of the 1 billion tonnes used raw, half goes into construction (pit-props, telegraph poles etc) and half is converted into pulp and chipboard.
· Of this 0.5 billion tonnes, 0.4 billion tonnes of wood become wood-pulp for the paper, board, fibre, film and chemicals industry.
· A significant proportion of this pulpmill feedstock (up to 40% in some areas) comes from forest thinnings, and saw mill waste and 6% from non-pulp sources such as straw, bagasse, hemp and cotton. This feedstock yields about 0.25 billion tonnes of pulp.
· About 0.004 billion tonnes of this pulp output are a high quality dissolving grade for forming into fibres, films, water soluble polymers and chemicals. Dissolving grade pulp is perhaps better described as industrial grade cellulose polymer, and should be considered alongside the polyester or nylon polymer chips which are the feedstocks of the synthetic fibre plants.
· Rayon manufacture consumes 0.003 billion tonnes of this cellulose, with about 2/3rds going into staple and one third into filament and tow (including acetate).
· If ever the use of trees to make fibres on this scale becomes unsustainable, we could always farm the oceans for seaweed and make the closely related alginate fibres, or even produce chitin fibres from insects or shellfish.

So, the cellulose fibres, which thrived before we learned how to make fibres from cheap petrochemicals can thrive once again as the price, both monetary and ecological, of unsustainable raw materials increases further. Since the development of efficient hydroentanglement bonding processes, they can be converted into pure, soft cellulosic nonwovens which at first sight could provide consumers with the ecofriendly biodegradable nonwovens they
Unfortunately they are not thermoplastic so conversion processes will need adapting, and they are not yet available in the form of spunbonds so the cost differentials c.f. polypropylene spunbonds will be higher. Furthermore they are inherently wettable and will need finishing with hydrophobic materials to allow them to achieve the surface dryness levels needed for diapers. These problems are soluble.. After all, about 40 years ago polypropylene was thought by some to be incapable of replacing rayon in diaper coverstock because it was impossible to card, and far too hydrophobic for coverstock use.

Next: Cellulose Resurgent

The consumer's view

Previously:
Introduction
Diaper Trends
Wipes and Femcare Trends
Raw material and Manufacturing Trends

Globalisation and Climate Change
Peak Oil?

The disposables on which the nonwovens market has thrived for the last 40 years are now coming under pressure due to increasing consumer concerns revolving around concepts of sustainability, carbon footprint, renewability. They currently ignore the problems likely to arise from peak oil, maybe because in reality these are driving the sorts of change they seem to want.

We can already see consumer attitudes changing:

• Western consumers are realising that they can’t go on buying more and more so the pattern spending is changing to “sensible consumption”.
• Health, Wellness, Ethical, Fair-trade, Organic and Sustainable will be the watchwords of future marketing in the West. Nonwovens will be affected.
• They believe future sustainable products should optimise the use of renewable resources and be designed for multiple use through recycling.
• Buying eco-friendly goods is becoming fashionable and we could be about to witness a transformation of the fortunes of what to date have been “niche” eco-friendly hygiene products.
• The use of, and need for, ecofriendly products with environmental features and claims such as organic, biodegradable and flushable continues to grow.
• Biodegradable fibres, such a viscose, lyocell, cotton (organic) and PLA are all in short-supply and significantly more expensive than 6 months ago.
• Protein and chitin fibres are appearing in a wipes context for the first time.

Coming Next: Future diaper raw materials?

Peak Oil?

Previously:
Introduction
Diaper Trends
Wipes and Femcare Trends
Raw material and Manufacturing Trends

Globalisation and Climate Change

The growth of industry in general and the nonwoven industry in particular has been driven by the availability of cheap energy and cheap polymers derived from oil. For absorbent hygiene products polypropylene, polyethylene and sodium polyacrylate are the key polymers and it is now clear that these products will not be cheap in future. When oil production peaks polymer prices will fluctuate wildly about an upward price trend and the need for lower cost alternatives will become urgent. When is world oil supply likely to peak and what will be the effect on prices when it does? This is a big debate with a wide variety of facts and learned opinions being available. Here are some of the latest.

• The normal production curve of a non-renewable resource was described by Hubbert (1962) to explain trends in crude oil production in the United States. Hubbert’s curve worked for the USA and it is reasonable to suppose that Global production of crude will also follow a similar normal curve.
• Much of the present debate on this subject focuses on when exactly the global production peak is expected to occur. Most estimates have placed the peak within the first decade of the 21st century, i.e we might already be there. When it happens oil price will rise steeply and remain volatile at a higher level as replacements take over, even though ~50% of the oil is still in the ground.
• The point is illustrated by a retrospective analysis of the oil boom of the 19^th century. Source: Price trends over a complete Hubbert Cycle: the case of the US whaling industry in the 19th Cy - Association of Peak Oil

Compare the 1835 to 1855 price curve above with the last 20 years of Brent Crude below:

Source: www.oilnergy.com

Despite oil price being high for several years, oil discoveries now run at only 9 billion barrels/year compared with 55 billion barrels/year in 1965.

• With discoveries at 9 billion barrels/year, consumption is at 30 billion and rising.
• North Sea oil production is 40% down on 1999, while oil prices have increased 7-fold – so no evidence here of previously non-economic fields being exploited now that prices are high.
• The International Energy Agency, optimistic last year, now predicts oil production will suffer a supply crunch in 2012 because above-ground geopolitical factors are restricting output now, and if/when these are resolved the below-ground geological reality will follow.
• Non-OPEC oil will peak in 2010, and the geopolitical problems of the OPEC regions mean that they cannot be relied on to make up the shortfall. (Exxon CEO – 2007)
• “Oil nationalism” will hinder the exploitation of the reserves in Venzuela and Russia.
• New oil detecting techniques remain to be applied and when they are, the known reserves will increase substantially. But, when you build in optimistic reserve growth and optimistic technological forecasts for their exploitation you can only delay peak oil to 2020.
• The Chairman of Total Oil is assuming Peak Oil by 2020 and is asking governments to reduce energy use to delay this further.

It is not always clear whether these predictions include the unconventional oil sources such as tar sands, and increasing use of bio-ethanol and bio-diesel may also delay peak oil further. That said, if we think of these fuels making up a shortfall in transportation demand - the largest single oil usage – then we should consider these opinions recently published:

• Production of oil from coal and/or tar-sands will not grow fast enough to compensate for falling conventional oil production and rising demand.
• Production of liquid fuel from coal and/or tar-sands is energy and water intensive, and the resulting fuel is less efficient than conventional gasoline.
• Carbon dioxide emissions from the production and use of this liquid fuel is significantly higher than for oil so its use will impact global warming more than conventional oil.
• 20% of US corn now goes to ethanol for blending with gasoline. But:
• $1.30/gallon of subsidies for ethanol blenders distort the economics.
• Ethanol only provides 85% of the power of gasoline.
• On an energy yield basis and excluding all subsidies and tax breaks, ethanol is now costing $7/gallon compared with $3/gallon for gasoline.
• Should food acreage be used to power vehicles? No problem in the USA now, and in future yields will increase due to GM. But for the world as a whole this would be unacceptable.
• Bio fuel from US corn is a self delusion: current yields are heavily based on petrochemotherapy (oil-based fertilisers and pesticides) and massive irrigation – and can not be extrapolated into a major energy source.
• George Bush is now supporting ethanol from wood chips, grasses and agriwaste – i.e. from cellulose.
• Cellulose ethanol would be a better option than corn even with oil at $40 barrel.

All the above opinions are related to the next 20 years. Further out, everyone seems to agree that the world will be switching from conventional oil to other energy sources at an ever increasing rate. It’s just the nature of those sources that remains obscure to us and the precise timing of the changeover.

Coming Next: what do consumers think?

Globalisation and Climate Change

Previously:
Introduction
Diaper Trends
Wipes and Femcare Trends
Raw material and Manufacturing Trends

The first and most obvious answer is Globalisation leading to more of the same as the established technologies and markets of the developed world are applied to raise the living standards of the rest.

Increased global demand for nonwovens and disposables is assured for at least 10 years as the most populus regions of the world centred on China and India, once described as “under developed” aspire to the same standards of life and convenience as has been enjoyed in the last couple of decades in the developed regions. They, and then Africa, will rapidly catch up with what used to be called the developed world.

The situation in the Americas and Europe will be different as a result of increasing public awareness that two “megatrends” which have been evident for the last 40 years at least, are in fact real and need to be addressed with some urgency.

The first is Climate Change, now known to be caused by industrialisation, and the other is the depletion of the fossil reserves on which our 4 decades of uninterrupted growth have been based. We are now living in the transition period known as Peak Oil, and I’ll now turn attention to each of these megatrends.

Climate Change

The human race has proved so successful that the agricultural and industrial systems needed to sustain it, to further improve its living standards, and to grow it further are now known to be destroying the natural life-support systems on which it depends. At base the problem is one of overpopulation, but it seems politically unacceptable to address this issue directly. The essentials of life (“The hierarchy of needs”), clean air, water, uncontaminated food and a moderate temperature are all being affected (polluted?) by the non-essentials which range from ever-better housing through global travel for all, to the convenience products which allow us spend more time productively and less on just living. Attempting to reduce the impact of the growing population by reducing its demands for energy and non-essentials is now politically acceptable and governments around the developed world are competing to be “greener than thou”, while the developing world is claiming exemption on the grounds that they’re way behind in energy use.

A consensus is emerging. We now feel we must act quickly to reverse the build up of greenhouse gases (mainly carbon dioxide but methane is much more potent), in order to reduce global warming and hence the trend to a more energetic atmosphere and sea-level rise. Carbon dioxide levels are the key to global temperatures, and also to the relative success of the plant kingdom versus the animal kingdom. We often forget that animals were able to evolve to compete with plants because photosynthesis and other natural process removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and added oxygen. A balance where the two kingdoms thrived in each others company was arrived at until the growth of the human population, the onset of industrialisation, and the discovery that exponential growth was the only way to keep everyone happy. Since then, as amply illustrated in Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”, we have been digging up fossil carbon, oxidising it in our energy generating processes, and putting it back into the atmosphere, appearing for all the world to be trying to reverse the atmospheric change which allowed us to evolve. Maybe it is already too late to reverse a warming process that appears to include positive feedback. A warmer world will release more of the carbon trapped in ice, dissolved in sea water and nearly-fossilised in the peat bogs currently inactive in the permafrost regions of the north. Biodegradation rates will increase, and more methane will escape to the atmosphere where this occurs anaerobically and uncontrolled. Melting polar ice will allow the newly revealed dark surface to absorb even more solar radiation where once it was reflected it back into space.

Carbon-offsetting has emerged as a mechanism for driving change to more sustainable industrial and transportation practises, and carbon-footprint now appears to be understood by most consumers. Most who understand it want to reduce it – even if it costs a little more. Furthermore, the fossil reserves we have been using so profligately could be about to increase in price sufficiently to force us into new ways of living and generating energy. While energy generation is beyond the scope of this paper, the by-products of energy generation from fossil fuels, ethylene and propylene, are fundamentally important to our industry’s synthetic polymer requirements, so the fate of fossil fuels needs to be considered as a factor important to future trends in nonwovens.

Coming next: Peak oil

Raw Material and Manufacturing Trends.

Previously:Introduction
Diaper Trends
Wipes and Femcare Trends

The theme of the last 35 years has been the progressive replacement of fibres and absorbents obtained from biomass with fibres and absorbents obtained from fossil reserves. Within that megatrend we’ve seen:

• Polyester replacing viscose rayon and cotton in blends, initially as a cost saving measure.
• Embossed latex-bonded 100% polyester coverstocks for improved surface dryness (and lower cost).
• Conulated film replacing fibrous coverstocks on femcare and adult incontinence products.
• 100% PP staple nonwovens, thermally bonded and embossed – for even drier coverstock and lower cost.
• Polyacrylic superabsorbents replacing fluff pulp.
• 100% PP Spunbonds replacing staple in coverstock and backsheets.
• Air-Laid pulps replacing latex bonded fibres in wipes.
• Hydroentangled fibres replacing air-laid in wipes.

Nonwovens Manufacturing Trends

The move to synthetic polymers allowed spunbonding to develop and started the “arms race” between dry laying and spunbonding that has transformed the economics and quality of both processes. Leaving aside the early history of spunbonding when it was restricted to the inventors, e.g. Dupont, ICI and Freudenberg, the technology began to transform the industry when machines first from Lurgi and later from Reifenhauser and others began to replace the traditional card and bond processes. These machines which effectively by-passed fibre producers and allowed the nonwovens producer to convert polymer chips directly into nonwovens were initially slow, relatively narrow, and incapable of making a lightweight coverstock to match the carded product. However in the last 25 years, driven by the expanding market for disposables, they have become the low cost producer of quality lightweights. Along the way, melt-blowing heads positioned between the fibre spinnerets have allowed improvements in opacity, cover and barrier properties. Today’s machines are up to 7 metres wide run up to 700 m/min at basis weights down to 10 gsm with fibre counts down to 1 denier - and below with a melt-blow capability. Bicomponent fibres, usually PP/PE can be spun with little loss of output once the extra polymer handling kit and special spinnerets are added.

Spunbonding was transformed by German engineers and carding followed, again being re-engineered in Germany and Italy. Wide fast carding systems were developed to allow the thermal bonded staple coverstocks to be produced ever more economically, and these systems were later adapted to feed cellulosic blends into the newer hydroentanglement bonding systems. Up to the development of high productivity lines with hydroentanglement bonding in the 1990’s, almost all nonwoven machinery developments had been for the synthetic fibres: the earlier development of calendar bonding having led to the industry being largely re-equipped with systems that could no longer handle the natural polymer fibres efficiently.

Hydroentanglement on the other hand is perfect for inherently wettable, water swellable fibres of the cellulosic variety, and for the first time lightweight cellulosic nonwovens could be made where the softness of the cellulose could be properly perceived in a binder-free construction. Hydroentanglement, like spunbonding, was transformed, initially by one engineering firm (Perfojet) into a wide, fast, highly efficient bonding system which in turn allowed disposable wipes to be transformed from a nice-to-have product to an essential of everyday life.

Coming next: Globalisation and Climate Change

Wipes and Femcare Trends

Previously:
Introduction
Diaper Trends

Even wipes, one of the original disposables, have in the last decade grown dramatically as clever marketing made them increasingly essential for a wide range of personal, domestic and industrial cleaning jobs. Here too, a sector once dominated by cellulosics has evolved to use increasing percentages of the non-renewables.

• Back in the 1960’s the leading disposable wipe in Europe were “J-Cloths” made by the Chicopee division of Johnson and Johnson, these being shadowed by numerous own-brand versions, one of which was made by the company I was doing Research for at that time – the BFF division of Courtaulds –then the leading rayon producer and the leading supplier of fibres to nonwovens.
• Baby wet-wipes were unknown, but most users of towelling diapers used a nonwoven “nappy-liner” and these were often used for the initial clean-up during a change. Incidentally the nappy liners were flushable and biodegradable.
• Wet wipes as we know them now were initially used for hand cleaning when travelling, came in canisters, and were also made of either wet or dry laid rayon, latex bonded.
• Air-laid woodpulp with a minor content of reinforcing fibres took the lions share of growth in the USA and Europe
• In the 1990’s hydroentangled rayon/polyester blends were successfully introduced into Europe as premium-priced ultra-soft (c.f.air-laid) baby wipes.
• Since then the growth in the wipes sector has been dramatic, with spin-offs into household wipes for kitchen, bathroom, floors and furniture, and into dry-dusters using statically charged tow fibres.

Femcare trends

External protection has had a similar evolution to diapers, initially being based entirely on natural materials, mainly cotton. Early products were reusable but as nonwovens became available for disposable (insert-pad) diapers, disposable sanitary pads could be made, these to being flushable and biodegradable but for the small percentage of incompletely cross-linked latex used to bind the nonwoven. Like diapers they too evolved to make use of the cheaper synthetic fibres, films and synthetic superabsorbents.

The tampon market was always regarded as a “fortress” by the cellulosic fibre producers, where prices were good, innovation was justified, and competition from non-absorbent synthetics unlikely. I can recall the excitement when in 1980 Tampax decided to launch a new tampon with the trilobal inflated-rayon which had been under development for the previous 10 years in Courtaulds Research, only to witness the initial dramatic success of P&G’s new “Rely” tampon – which contained superabsorbent powder on urethane sponge inside a polyester “tea-bag”, instead of absorbent fibres. “Rely”, probably for the wrong reasons, was associated with Toxic Shock Syndrome and was abandoned, and while the rayon industry breathed a sigh of relief, Tampax too postponed their launch of the trilobal rayon as too risky in the immediate aftermath of "Rely". P&G stopped production of “Rely” and the superabsorbent on which it was based, and exited tampons, until acquiring Tampax in the late ‘90’s. Had it been otherwise, tampons too would now be based mainly on non-renewable fossil reserves.

Coming next: Raw Material Trends and Nonwoven Manufacturing Trends

Nonwovens: What Happens Next?

The fabulous growth of the nonwoven industry in general and the disposable diaper in particular has been fuelled by the availability of low-cost synthetic polymers, by-products of low-cost energy production from fossil reserves priced close to extraction –as opposed to replacement- cost.

Fibre forming, web forming and web bonding technologies have evolved to use these synthetics ever more efficiently. Sustainability, biodegradability, carbon-footprint, intergenerational equity, and depletion of fossil reserves have been concerns which remained in the background throughout, until now.

Will the growth continue? The big changes which are increasingly familiar to all consumers may soon affect their purchasing decisions and it may no longer be safe simply to extrapolate past nonwoven industry trends.

We review the past 40 years and think about the future over the next few postings.

Coming Next: Diaper Trends

Diaper Trends

For the last 40 years the growth of the nonwovens industry has been driven by the ready availability of synthetic fibres cheaply made by exploitation of non-renewable fossil reserves. Disposable nonwovens, from coverstock to core-wrap, and durables from geotextiles to home furnishings, have evolved to use polypropylene, a low-cost by-product of petroleum refining, which has become the fibre for nonwovens.

The high-volume converted products which use the disposable nonwovens – diapers especially – have grown even faster due to performance improvements obtained by replacing woodpulp with superabsorbents based on the same non-renewables. The life-enhancing convenience of disposable diapers allowed consumers to forget that their disposal via the solid waste stream diverted human excrement from its traditional treatment in the sewage systems, and made regular collection of rubbish an aesthetic and public health necessity.

Here’s a chronology:

• 1950’s: Disposable diapers were biodegradable rectangular pads, disposed of by flushing down the toilet. They were made of woodpulp but for a tiny percentage of acrylic latex holding the rayon topsheet together. The pants into which they were inserted were washable and reusable.

• 1960’s: P&G developed the one-piece Pampers diaper – kitefold – using the same materials but with an integrated plastic back, which meant it had to be disposed of in the solid waste stream. Consumer concerns about human faeces being spread on landfill, were soon overcome. Sales of rayon, then the cheapest fibre for coverstock, soared.
• 1970’s: Rayon became more expensive than polyester so polyester was blended with rayon to make coverstock. “Surface dryness”was discovered with the less wettable synthetics.
• 1980’s: Polypropylene staple, thermal bonded, becomes cheaper than rayon/polyester blends and hence becomes the coverstock of choice. Synthetic superabsorbents are blended with woodpulp to reduce leakage and improve surface dryness further.
• 1990’s: Superabsorbent and elastic content increased, more 100% PP coverstock used per diaper as cuffs and textile-like backsheets are added. Children staying in diapers for longer. Training pants developed for older children.
• 2000’s: 100% PP Coverstock switches to spunbond from staple, thanks to amazing improvements in the formation of lightweight achieved by Reicofil and others. Even core wrap is switching to PP from cellulose tissue. Diaper use growing in the world’s most populus regions (China, India)

Previously:

Introduction

Coming Next - Wipes & Femcare Trends