February 25: After years of research, brands Stora Enso, H&M and IKEA said that they are together all set to build a demonstration plant in Sweden in order to generate a new and more sustainable wood-based textile fibre. The information was bestowed by the brands earlier on Tuesday.
With this development, the brands aim at reducing their climatic footprint and pollution as they are in high need of affordable greener alternatives to cotton, polyester and traditional viscose. The projects of developing ways to turns the tree into textile fibre have various Nordic pulp makers as a part of the development.
TreeToTextile in a statement said that its plant will be having a production capacity of 1,500 tonnes while its owners will fund a 35 million euro ($42.6 million) investment. The fourth part-owner of TreeToTextile, Lars Stigsson said that the plant would be located at Nymolla mill in Sweden, which is owned by Stora Enso (a Finnish forestry group) and its construction will be beginning in the near future.
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The statement also quoted, “The novel process is deliberately designed to have low energy demand and low chemical need. It is engineered to suit large scale production and includes a recovery system for reusing chemicals. By investing in a demonstration plant, we are finally on the go. With it, we are turning years of R&D into reality to increase the biobased share on the textile market to support climate action.”