Japan’s Teijin Aramid has achieved yarn-to-yarn recycling for its Twaron fibre. Aligning with Teijin Aramid’s belief in taking responsibility for the environmental impact of its material flows, this development is a key step toward its goal of supplying fully circular fibre. Teijin is a technology-driven company that produces high quality fibre.

For more than 20 years, Teijin Aramid has been recycling aramids such as its Twaron fibre into pulp, which is then used in automotive brake pads and gaskets. Now, for the first time, its research and innovation centre in Arnhem, the Netherlands, has successfully achieved yarn-to-yarn recycling using feedstocks from end-of-life materials. Several hundred kilograms of Twaron yarn have now been produced from materials of various recycling statuses. The properties of this circular Twaron fibre are excellent, and its performance is equal to that of standard Twaron fibre. Teijin Aramid has a patent pending for this breakthrough technology, the company said in a press release.

Teijin Aramid has now partnered with FibreMax, from the Netherlands, and Hampidjan, based in Iceland, to demonstrate the performance in demanding real-life applications. Using the circular Twaron will make up more than 90 per cent of the final product’s weight. These partners are confident that Teijin Aramid’s new technology will enable circularity in high-performance applications and help to tackle the issue of waste from end-of-life products.

In line with its belief that circular products will be the ‘new normal’, Teijin Aramid will also be scaling up production of its fully circular high-performance fibre, with the aim for circular Twaron to be commercially available in 2024.

“Our goal is a fully circular aramid value chain that works toward zero emissions. Our vision is a sustainable alliance of partners and customers that use aramid for different applications and retrieve it at the end of the products’ lifetime to close the aramid loop. Our new ability to re-spin yarn using recycled material is a game-changer for circularity in high-performance aramid fibres,” Jan Roos, director for sustainability at Teijin Aramid said in a statement.