Interview with Dr. Razvan Popescu

A spin finish is an application to man-made fibers of surfactants, lubricants, cohesion agents and other additives as solution or emulsion for facilitating the primary or secondary spinning process. In fiber production, a distinction is drawn between filament yarn and staple fiber finish. Indeed we do supply products to the nonwoven industry. We produce products for the hygienic, automotive, geotech and other end-uses for different application and requirements e.g. hydrophilic spin finish for hygiene staple fibers; spin finishes designed for applications where a smooth handle is required etc. This is only a very small example of our wide range of products.

Beside Italy, we have production facilities in China, Indonesia, USA and Turkey. We provide support to our customers from these places. A significant part of our TCL business comes from China and USA and now, we have started to approach intensively the ASEAN area with a direct support from Indonesia.

Due to the fact that the economic situation in the EU is not really bright and the EU is right now the innovation center for the Technical Textile sector, we do expect that in the next two years, the global market for TCL will slow down a little bit. Nevertheless, there are fast growing markets such as China, India and ASEAN that are most probably going to compensate partially. For the automotive industry, these are the main areas of growth and as mentioned already this sector is very demanding of new products and technologies. Protech is as well a sector with a high request: fabrics for fire workers, industry, defense and security. Medtech will play a role as well, in surgery fabrics and other hygiene products. However, more generally in all fields of applications, one can find a lot of new innovations and many of them are not only local. Any new development, regardless whether it is done in the EU or US or Asia; can be reasonably quick transferred to other areas. There are two main reasons for this - bigger multinational companies have several production facilities around the world and most of the equipment and chemicals needed to produce those special fabrics are also produced worldwide.

There are plenty of new ideas in the market for many application fields. In our opinion, Mobiltech is and will be one of the biggest centers of innovative application for car weight reduction; new laminates for upholstery and car carpets; better fabrics for safety belt, airbags, etc. In Geotech/Agrotech, the key innovation will emerge in the erosion prevention & paving way for deforestation and also for protection of road constructions etc.

The Bozzetto Technical Coating and Laminating (TCL) department offers a wide range of products for most of the application fields within the Technical textile business. Our main areas of application are Mobiltech, Clothtech, Sporttech, Protech, Hometech. The products we are offering are Thermoplastic / Hot melts resins, additives for the same, Polymer Dispersions and the needed Additives as well as Flame Retardants, Fluor Carbon chemicals and special customized compounds for a wide range of applications.

There are several R&D projects running in the TCL department. For instance in the Hometech sector, we are working on reducing lambda value for insulation of roofs and walls. In the Mobiltech sector, we are working on protective fabrics made from nonwoven and in Protech sector, we are working on permanent antibacterial systems. On the other hand, we regularly organize workshops with our customers on our state-of-the-art pilot plants in Germany to solve problems or create new technologies and products.

That is for sure China followed by India, Vietnam and other countries in the ASEAN area. Brazil would be a very interesting market for technical textiles, mainly because of the fast growing population and growing incomes in those countries. An increase in population needs more mobility like cars, airplanes and public transportation and as we know the Mobiltech sector with a more than 20% share, is the biggest segment in the technical textiles area. A rise in population also means more requests for clean water (filtration systems) and higher consumption of food (agrotech and geotech fabrics). A fast growing industrial sector also requires protective clothing. Due to the fact that China is getting more and more expensive (energy and manpower cost), some companies are already exploring the possibility to produce their technical textiles in other countries and ASEAN countries are the answer.