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

Viscose Rayon Production - Old Courtaulds

Please go to:
http://www.lyocell-development.com/2012/01/the-story-of-rayon-20th-c.html

Insight 2011 Conference Minneapolis USA – 23rd-27th October

Global Tissue and Hygiene Markets

Howard Telford, Research Associate of Euromonitor International (USA) observed that the global tissue and hygiene retail markets were immune to the recession and apparently detached from the core economic trends.  However the global picture hid stasis in North America and Western Europe which had been offset by growth in the emerging markets where population and incomes were still growing.  Between 2005 and 2010:

·         Global $ growth of 32.4% was made up of an emerging market growth of 75% and a developed market growth of 12%.

·         Highest growth rates (11-12%) were in Latin America, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.  Asia Pacific as a whole grew 7.5%.

·         The USA was still the largest market ($26bn) but China ($18bn) is catching up fast with 9.2% per annum growth. 

·         China has accounted for 80% of the Asia/Pacific growth, but India hardly progressed.

·         P&G ($25.3bn at retail globally) were the largest supplier.  K-C was second at $23.3bn and SCA third at $6.3bn. 

·         Both P&G and K-C had grown at 4.5% p.a. over the 5-year period, but for 2009-10, P&G showed 5.4% growth against K-C’s 4.3%.

·         All major manufacturers grew through repositioning their presence in emerging markets with China being the key target.

·         Private label remains over-dependent on mature markets, especially Europe which has seen both low growth and a resurgence of brands in 2010.

·         Supermarket and Hypermarket sales still dominate, but Internet sales are now growing at 25% per year and in Korea the internet accounts for 45% of diaper sales.

·         Incontinence products have grown at 40% p.a. from a low base in developed markets and appear unaffected by economic instability.

For the future, considering the 2010-15 period:

Man Made Fibres Conference - Dornbirn Austria Sept 2011

Introduction

740 delegates from 30 countries were drawn to Dornbirn for this, the 50th annual conference organised by the Austrian Man-Made Fibres Association.  Germany provided most delegates (264) and with Austria (192) and Switzerland (102) the majority language was German.  There were 3 simultaneous sessions so a maximum of a third of the total could be heard. Several were not available in hard copy and more than usual were available only in German.  The tight scheduling left little time for questions.

Opening Address

Friedrich Weninger CEO Lenzing and President of AMFA noted that in 1962 the first AMFA conference recorded a world fibre production of 15 million tonnes, 0.7 million being synthetic and 10.1 million cotton.  Last year the total had reached 73 million tonnes, 43 million being synthetic,  25 million being cotton and man-made cellulosics had reached a record 4.2 million tonnes.  Continued growth of the total fibre market was expected to be 3% per annum, with cotton having plateaued and man-made cellulosics due to grow fastest at 9% pa.

Predicting short term trends was trickier than ever:

·         The stock market fluctuations were caused by speculation unbacked by real effects

·         Customers did not really know what they wanted and could do no more than extrapolate from past trends.

Megatrends were easier:

·         The future would be dominated by developments related to energy supply, healthcare, biotechnology, sustainability, well-being and the convenience of nonwoven materials.

·         Nonwovens would grow to consume 25% of total fibres. (with 100 million tonnes fibres expected to be used by 2020, this equates to 25 million tonnes of nonwovens)

·         Total Technical Textiles (including NWs) would be half the total.

·         Wood will remain the most important, but not the only source of cellulose for fibre.  Waste biomass sources were being developed.

Patent Litigation Judgement

As expert witness in the Aquacel/Durafibre wound dressings case it was good to see that the first thoughts about the validity of patents I had been involved with at Courtaulds coupled with the hard an painstaking preparation by Slaughter and May and the defendants, were upheld in the Judgement. 

Para 12 is relevant to our business. 

HIS HONOUR JUDGE BIRSS QC recorded
"Mr Woodings is an experienced fibres scientist who specialises in cellulose chemistry.  He is a consultant to the nonwoven and fibre industries and has over 50 years experience in the industry. Between 1982 and 1994 he worked in the Courtaulds Research Division and from 1994 and 1998 he was Market Development Director for Tencel Fibres Europe. He was commissioning editor and author of the book ‘Regenerated Cellulose Fibres’, and also contributed to Kirk Othmer’s Encyclopaedia of Chemical Technology and the Encyclopaedia of Polymer Science and Technology on the same topic.

He was an excellent witness."

The full judgement is at:

http://www.eplawpatentblog.com/2011/August/Convatec%20judgment.pdf