Textile mills want to improve efficiency and get cleaner. Working closely with key customers in India and China, Novozymes launched BioPrep® Fusion for cleaner pre-treatment – with big success.
Textile mills have long required solutions that improve their manufacturing processes, decrease water consumption, and reduce the pollutants they release as wastewater. It’s now an urgent need as consumers demand clothes produced in a sustainable way and environmental regulations get tougher.
For example, Tirupur, one of India’s biggest textile hubs, was close to collapse in the year 2011, after a High Court order had shut down over 750 dyeing units over environmental concerns.
A particularly tough challenge for these mills is the textile scouring process, which requires high process temperatures, harsh chemicals and plenty of water to remove impurities from the fabric and prepare it for further processing.
Listen closely
In December 2014, Novozymes organized a workshop in Tirupur with more than 140 key professionals from India’s textile sector to identify industry challenges and raise awareness about the benefits of bioscouring.
The learnings from that event and from close interaction with key textile customers led to development of BioPrep Fusion, a new multi-enzyme solution which removes pectin and other impurities from raw cotton, and prepares textiles for the wet-processing stages to ensure excellent dyeing results. The product was first launched in Tirupur and the Guangzhou province in China in mid-2016.
“When BioPrep Fusion was introduced in Tirupur, it was the answer to textile customers’ request for new technology that would help them continue their journey towards more sustainable processing,” says Peter Faaborg-Andersen, Global Marketing Director at Novozymes.
More performance, lower footprint
Bioprep Fusion enables textile mills to reach desired performance and reliability, while working in neutral pH and at lower temperature. A growing number of mills in India, China, Pakistan and Bangladesh are using the technology. They are realizing improved fabric quality, less weight loss, and substantial savings in water (67% reduction), time (50%), energy (50%) and chemicals discharge (30 % less COD/BOD in waste water) compared to conventional pre-treatment.
“BioPrep Fusion has been designed to make it compatible with textile knits manufacturing processes, which are prevalent,” says Peter Faaborg-Andersen. “Recent results show that BioPrep Fusion technology can also work well for yarn and towel manufacturing.”
