After a disappointing end to 2016 and a sluggish beginning to 2017, spinners in India are finally beginning to regain some optimism. They have been getting a steady stream of orders for the past five or six weeks and enquiries are on the rise.

Ring-spun and air-jet yarns are getting a lot of attention. Positions are beginning to get a little tight again. Orders for open end yarns, in general, are still a bit light, but are improving. Interest is particularly high in specific categories like organic products, fire retardant yarns and products used for filtering. As the oil industry continues to recover, these categories may continue to grow.

One area that has not revived much, however, is home furnishings. But even here spinners expect business to pick up substantially in the near future. Despite renewed optimism among spinners, there are still a few concerns. Pricing and margins top the list. They feel selling all the yarn they can make is of no use, if profits are low. Margins continue to be a lot thinner than they would like. Spinners are doing everything they can to keep prices as low as possible but in a lot of cases, they have to rely on value-added advantages to create differentiation — quality, delivery and service.

New manufacturing yarn processes and finishes are pushing towards a more sustainable delivery with a reduction of water. The textile industry uses billions of liters of water throughout all processing from dyeing to specialty chemical finishes that are applied to textiles in water baths to scouring, bleaching and softening. Through the Detox campaign Greenpeace has highlighted the damage of water pollution and use from the textile chain has had on the environment.

Greenpeace is campaigning to stop industry poisoning our water with hazardous, persistent and hormone-disrupting chemicals and the textile industry is embracing change in eco-friendly chemical use as well as water conservation. The importance of sustainability was featured at ISPO Texttrends in February and is now become a custom than a passing fad as the textile industry looks to new processes in reducing water and energy.

Textile manufacturer Schoeller and auxiliaries and dyes specialists at Textilcolor have developed Ecodye, a new auxiliary concept used, in particular, in polyester dyeing processes. The technology accelerates the dyeing process and contributes to cutting costs, while at the same time helping to preserve the environment with a low level of demand on resources. Ecodye also improves the dyeing levelness in polyester textiles. Spots and dye agglomeration are almost completely avoided, and the precipitation on the goods that arises as a result of polyester oligomers are no longer evident. On the other hand Ecodye provides good shade stability and avoids reproduction problems from batch to batch, reducing the rate of double staining and increasing the capacity utilization and productivity of the dyeing mill on a long-term basis.

SpinDye, which is a new company exhibits at ISPO this year, the company offers a different approach in the production of synthetics, in particular nylon and polyester. Final laundering of fabrics is becoming a process of the past. An innovative collaboration held at the recent Kingpins Show in Amsterdam for denim highlighted the company’s technology in this area, in creating finishes that have now water or chemicals involved. The Laser Blaze machine creates graphics on surfaces using light, whilst NoStone is a system that create stonewash effects with the use of pumice stones through ozone finishing.

Italian company specialising in high-end fabrics Brugnoli, has launched a new high-quality, zero-kilometer fabric line based on recycled yarn called B.Recycled. In order to guarantee fabrics with exceptional quality and undisputed performance, Brugnoli has a partnership with the Italian company Fulgar.

This zero-kilometer product line means the supply chain is monitored and certified throughout. The creation of B.Recycled by Brugnoli starts with a raw material recycling process carried out entirely at Fulgar laboratories and mills. Work then continues at the Brugnoli plant, where all the fabrics are created, produced and dyed in the same location.

In 2015 Brugnoli broke new ground with the launch of its Br4 technology for the creation of bio-based fabrics. The eco-sustainable production process enables the creation of extremely high-quality fabrics made using Evo by Fulgar, a bio-based yarn obtained from castor bean. Evo by Fulgar is an eco-friendly yarn that aims to provide total comfort and technical performance combined with light weight, stretch, breathability and fast drying, plus naturally thermo regulating and bacterio static properties.

Italian premium denim manufacturer Italdenim participated in the latest edition of Kingpins Amsterdam through a new company founded in December 2016, Pure Denim. And Gigi Caccia, Co-owner of Italdenim and Pure Denim along with Ilaria explains they strongly believe in the importance of sustainable denim production. He further explains in the last few years the company had to fight against aggressive low-price competitors and indebtedness caused by strong investment in adequate machinery following new sustainable productive standards.

The Caccia brothers want to rescue Italdenim, the company that continues producing denim for their group. Their aim is to once again touch their yearly target of making 8 million meter denim. Caccia further adds the company believes in the importance of sustainable production. During Kingpins, they showcased a completely new denim collection produced as per new smart and environmentally-friendly techniques.

Among the new environmentally-friendly products offered by the new company, was ‘Smart Denim’, a light gray denim that employs an innovative dyeing technique that uses only recycled graphite combined with Kitosan yarn, a bio-based finishing substance derived from crustaceous skin, that requires nor water nor chemicals when finishing denim.

The graphite-based dyeing technique was developed by WRAD a company co-founded by Matteo Ward, visionary entrepreneur sensitive to sustainable issues and involved in recycling graphite remains from industrial use in partnership with Perpetua, a pencil brand that is 100 per cent made with recycled graphite.

Gigi Caccia further said they believe recycling graphite for dyeing denim, like every new eco-friendly denim technology is the beginning of a new revolution in this market one can compare it to the birth of electric car in the car industry.