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Abstracts
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Monday, October 24

The Keynote Address: The Color of Money
James Robinson, Tufco Technologies, Inc.
      The cost and challenges of going “green” are not insurmountable, but they are real. Consumers, retailers, marketers, and manufacturers alike are driving green northward through the supply chain, forcing companies to find “green” or lose opportunity. The US Government and various trade associations are doing their best to identify and certify what comprises “green,” but there continues to be lack of clarity related to branding and claims made on packages. This brief paper will provide a bit of insight (pun intended) into what makes a product the same color as one side of US paper currency, and where the potholes lie in the road to delivering to the consumer something of the correct color.

Global Perspectives on Retail Tissue and Hygiene Disposables Markets
Howard Telford, Euromonitor International
      This presentation offers a global perspective on the retail tissue and hygiene market, looking at overall performance at the global and regional levels, category performance, and growth opportunities. The presentation will draw on Euromonitor’s latest tissue and hygiene research and will incorporate regional case studies.

New Generation Jumbo Spooling and Splicing Technologies
Pierre Croutelle, Spoolex
      Production machine downtime causes reduced output and product quality. Traverse winding, or spooling, allows continuous tension on the product and eliminates the risk of pleats. Combining spooling and ultrasonic splicing technologies makes it possible to save time on changeovers, reduce waste and wind up to 40% more product per spool or bobbin.

Money Can Be “Green” Too! Leverage Additional Financial Benefit from Sustainable Materials and Technology
Fred Barlow, FReMCo Group
      The paper will present an innovative, low risk strategy that can lead to new revenue streams and improved financial performance - specifically related to materials and technology that bring an environmental benefit. The paper will illustrate how companies can capture the full value of any changes made that directly or indirectly lead to the use of less and greener energy. Improved bottom line performance is achieved by capturing and leveraging the ‘Environmental Value’ - the financial value of the emission credits that result from a reduction in emissions coming from changes in activity. Don’t leave money on the table – put it on your bottom line.

Decorate, Gain Attention, Gain Share! Opportunities and Processes for Product Decoration
Ondrej Kruk, Videojet
      Personal hygiene companies are challenged to grow their brands within an ever increasing competitive landscape where the risk of commoditization has never been higher. Product decoration is a proven product differentiation strategy to grow a brand’s share and profitability. The presentation will introduce the product design trends (functional vs. fashionable) in the industry, as well as the methods to execute a decoration strategy. The advantages and disadvantages of each method will be dissected and real application examples will be provided for in-line digital and flexographic methods, as well as off-line pre-printing.

Bioenergy — Potential, Progress and the Future
Anne Rahikainen, RISI
      The bioenergy sector includes a broad range of product areas: biofuels, pellets, and electricity and heat generation from biomass. The sector growth is driven by governmental mandates and financial incentives made available to the producers and investors. The growth of bio-based industries promises to be substantial based on the large number of announcements for new projects starting up over the next few years. This represents both an opportunity and potential threat for the North American forest products industry - a threat in terms of increasing competition for wood fiber, and an opportunity in terms of potential for adding value in new ways to a traditional raw material base. This presentation examines the growth and drivers of this industry by business area, and the potential impact and opportunities for players in the forest products sector in North America.

Nonwovens Vision 2020
Abby Bailey, EDANA
      Over the next 10 years the world population will be not only growing, but also changing. Evolution across the globe in terms of demographics, access to technology and services, and the growing economic power to utilize those services offers significant opportunities and challenges for today’s businesses. EDANA, the association representing the nonwovens and related industries, studies these global megatrends and their likely impact on its member companies. This presentation will cover the highlights of the study and its findings.

SAP Supply — What a Difference a Year Makes... or Does It?
Ian Davenport, Davenport International Associates LLC
      Shortages have produced many recent announcements of new capacity for SAP. What will be the reality of the announcements? Will the market return to over capacity beloved by buyers? We revisit the supply/ demand balance for SAP.

Tuesday, October 25

Light Weight Fabrics via the Rando Airlaid Process
Mike Flaherty & Greg Moran, Rando Machine Corporation
      The Rando™ dry forming process has been utilized for decades to produce batts and fabrics from a multitude of fibers, both long and short. This presentation provides a brief history and applications overview before focusing on variations of the technology which are of specific interest to light weight fabric producers and the hygiene market.

Fiber Developments for an Ecological Future
Thomas Hesse & Jörg Dahringer, Trevira GmbH
      This paper presents an overview of the latest innovations and fiber developments by Trevira GmbH to provide more environmentally friendly products, while saving energy costs, and without losing the well-known fiber properties of Trevira's Staple Fibers for airlaid applications. It will also cover the most recent developments in using polymers from renewable resources and the environmental advantages of manmade fibers in comparison to natural products.

New Developments in Airlaid Process Technology: 3D-JET Forming
Jens Erik Thordahl, Airlaid Nonwovens Systems
      This paper will describe a new type of airlaid production system: 3D-Jet Forming. Included in the presentation are a new type of hammer/disc mill for pulp, a low-cost cleaning system for binder spray wires, and in-line binder mixing systems. An energy recovery system using heat pump technology integrated with dryers, designed for latex-, thermal-, and multi-bonding processes, will be described.

A Continuum of Softness via Polymer Design
Jackie DeGroot, The Dow Chemical Company
      Strong consumer preference in the Global Health & Hygiene market for articles with enhanced softness is evident in the advertising and marketing campaigns of major brand owners. Claims such as super-soft, baby-soft, and silky-soft mirror the consumer’s desire for a more cloth-like and less plastic look and feel to diapers, feminine hygiene pads, and adult incontinence products. The options for providing softer nonwovens have evolved from additive and fabrication techniques, with the intent to change the surface characteristics of homopolymer polypropylene nonwovens, to more intrinsic forms of achieving softness via polymer design. Many of the challenges of incorporating “softer” polymers into spunbond nonwovens have been overcome through polymer design made possible by advancements in catalyst and polymer reactor design. Sacrifices normally observed in draw-down, throughput, tensiles, and abrasion resistance of monocomponent and bicomponent spunbond solutions have been overcome through tailored molecular design.

Nanometer Fibers By Gigameter Production Methods
Arnold Wilkie, Hills Inc.
      Nanofibers (a billionth of a meter) have historically been produced by electrospinning. This paper will deal with producing these by new meltblowing techniques (NANO-MB) and by High Island Count Island-IN-A-Sea (HICINS) techniques. With NANO-MB, one can produce a giga-sq-meter/year (a billion sq-meters) of 0.25 gsm fabric (a typical weight of nanofiber fabric) with a handful of wide meltblown beams. With HICINS, one can produce at about 30 times the rate of typical electrospinning techniques. The gigameter methods will be described and various production and cost examples will be presented.

Elastic Nonwovens Using Styrenic Block Copolymers: The Next Generation of Spunbond and Meltblown
John Flood, Kraton Polymers
      Several new elastic styrenic block copolymers are now available for high speed melt spinning applications. Bicomponent fibers using styrenic block copolymers in conjunction with polypropylene, polyester or nylon have been successfully spun at commercial spinning speeds. In addition, elastic meltblown grades are being developed as single webs and for laminates. The new polymer grades allow the manufacture of elastic nonwovens that have superior softness, biaxial stretch and are durable. The resulting fabrics are drapeable, non-tacky and breathable, enabling the creation of products that are soft, quiet and discreet. Potential uses include personal care products as well as medical and protective apparel, automotive fabrics, sporting goods apparel, industrial composites and specialty textiles.

Nanoval — Does it Split?
Martin Stobik, Nanoval GmbH & Co., KG
      The Nanoval process uses a different mechanism to produce fibers/filaments – by splitting instead of drawing only. The filaments achieve staple fiber tenacities, and the mean diameter reaches into the nano domain. The claim “it splits” can be assessed by different approaches: theoretically, as conservation of mass and with fluid dynamic calculations, and more practically, as shown in the achieved nonwoven webs and photos. Can a photo be proof, pro or contra, of splitting?

New Polyolefin Technologies — Overcoming Processing and Performance Challenges for Hygiene Adhesives
Christophe Morel-Fourrier & Benjamin Funk, Bostik, Inc.
      Polyolefins are not new materials. Since their first production in the 1930s, increasing use and availability has resulted in a healthy new development pipeline and a variety of new materials. These newer materials allow a breadth and robustness in adhesive applications that had previously been unavailable with polyolefin technology, leading to new adhesive formulations that offer excellent performance without sacrificing processability.

Wednesday, October 26

L-MODU for Nonwovens and Hot Melt Adhesives — A New Type of Polypropylene
Koichi Nishimura, Idemitsu Kosan Co., Ltd.
      L-MODU, a new and unique polypropylene developed by IDEMITSU will provide a lot of possibilities for the nonwoven industry. It is capable of producing nonwovens with a soft touch, as well as elastic nonwovens from a polyolefin. Another use is as a base polymer of hot melt adhesives for diapers and hygiene products. Key concepts for the development of L-MODU are described.

Rapid Changeover via Real Time Dashboard Controls
Wei Siong Tan, AccuSentry
      To remain competitive in the global marketplace, nonwoven manufacturers must be able to deliver a broad mix of diverse products more quickly and at lower costs than ever before. To do this, they must not only optimize production efficiency with holistic process control, but must also be able to facilitate rapid product changeover. One cost-effective option to help streamline the critical process from start-up to steady state is to activate the real time data from automated inspection systems and present it to operators via graphs and charts on a dashboard. This, coupled with standardized product management tools, will allow manufacturers to eliminate operator variability, compare and control inspection parameters across product styles, and better understand their entire process for continuous improvement. This paper will explore effective tools and implementation methods for such measures.

HYPOD™ Polyolefin Dispersions - A New Class of Binders for Nonwovens
Paul Nedwick, Dow Chemical Company
      Polyolefins are used in many diverse applications in packaging, health and hygiene, and in building and construction applications to impart tough, soft, impact resistant, and durable coatings. This paper introduces a new class of polyolefins, specifically aqueous polyolefin dispersions (Hypod™) which are now readily available for use in conventional aqueous coating methods used by nonwoven manufacturers. This technology enables nonwovens and textiles producers to use existing aqueous coating equipment to coat, spray or saturate their products with a range of polyolefin-based coatings to enhance and differentiate their products.

The Turkish Hygiene Market — Disposable Hygiene Products, Markets and Materials
Berna Yalcin, Hayat Kimya San. A.S.
      Turkey is becoming a major player in nonwoven markets such as diapers, feminine hygiene products, medical textiles, disposable products and roll goods such as spunbond, spunlace, and through-air bonded nonwovens. These markets have shown significant growth over the past decade.
      The disposables market in Turkey continues to be a price-led market, with heavy discounting and promotional activities, meaning that the market has struggled to maintain the high quality demanded by customers, despite continual product developments and improvements from manufacturers and raw material suppliers. This paper overviews Turkish markets and recent activity.

Airflow System Design, Air-Balancing and System Optimization for Hygienic Disposables Converting and Nonwoven Fabrics
Christoph Ritter, Osprey Corporation
      Efficient “Air-System Design” is a critical aspect for the successful operation of modern hygienic and nonwoven production lines.
      This presentation will provide a well-illustrated summary of the design, balancing, effective trouble-shooting and maintenance of the process-air related systems which are relavant to our industry (core-forming, web-forming, dust control, pneumatic transportation, trim handling, material separation systems, etc).
      These important air-system design guidelines will be outlined and illustrated with many practical examples. In summary, this presentation will explain how to achieve an overall better system efficiency, less energy consumption, less dust exposure for operators and the environment, and better process control (to achieve a better final product with less weight variation and raw material consumption).

Innovative Applications and Developments for Superabsorbent Fibers
Dave Hill, Technical Absorbents, part of Bluestar Fibres Co., Ltd.
      This paper will cover the technology of SAF and its versatility to be used in a diverse range of applications, from the ubiquitous food/hygiene markets, to washable coolant apparel, and just about everything in between.

Fluff Pulp Supply, Demand, Balance and Prospects
David Fortin, RISI
      The fluff pulp industry represents a small portion of the global wood pulp market. However, it is becoming an increasingly important part of the U.S. wood pulp market as its share of U.S. softwood pulp production grows. Emerging markets and an aging global population are driving demand growth as the use of disposable absorbent hygiene products spreads. The presentation will include a near-term outlook for fluff pulp supply, demand and trends in pricing.

Hygiene Market Penetration Growth in Key Emerging Markets is Now Driving Global Outlook
Pricie Hanna, John R. Starr Inc.
      How important are the key emerging markets to the global volume growth prospects in the hygiene market? This paper will review the pace of market penetration in the major hygiene absorbent products categories and examine the volume growth outlook in the large population countries that are undeveloped and developing markets. The major drivers of market penetration will be described and contrasted in these key emerging markets. Observations will be shared on the growth opportunities for raw material suppliers to the hygiene market. The increasing global significance of these emerging markets for hygiene absorbent products will be assessed.

Thursday, October 27

The Next Great Step for Renewables
Eamonn Tighe & Robert Green, NatureWorks BV
      This presentation will give an update on the latest developments and most recent commercial launches of products made from Ingeo™ PLA. It will also comment on the next level of developments and provide a view on what can be expected from the biobased and renewables sector in the years to come.

New Airlaid Developments From Oerlikon Neumag
Ingo Maehlmann, Oerlikon Neumag
      The presentation is a brief overview of important recent developments in airlaid technology made by Oerlikon Neumag’s division that was formerly M&J Fibretech. The future for airlaid producers demands higher production speeds while maintaining high quality standards, as well as lower basis weight products with equal performance. To address these needs Oerlikon Neumag focuses on improvement of nearly all individual components of an airlaid plant. Starting with air conditioning, through web production and roll-handling, every aspect is constantly under review. While most improvements are not obvious to a visitor touring a recent line, machine operators can tell the difference.
      Oerlikon Neumag will present a new development for the first time at INSIGHT 2011, that is sure to lead to future high-speed airlaid lines.

New Bio-Based Polymers For Superabsorbents and Emulsion Binders
John R. Shaw, Itaconix
      Polymers of itaconic acid have shown promise as alternatives to acrylic-based polymers for over 20 years. Itaconix LLC has established the ability to produce itaconic acid-based polymers with competitive cost and performance. For diaper applications, the company is developing cross-linked polymers as bio-based superabsorbents. Additional opportunities also exist in diapers for bio-based polymers from itaconic acid.

Changing Patterns in Product Needs and Marketing Needs for Adult and Feminine Disposables
Elizabeth Hanson, Marketing Technology Service, Inc.
      The adult incontinence markets (both urinary and fecal) and fem hygiene market are in a constant state of flux based on changes in demographics, risk factors and medical practices, e.g. diabetes, obesity, pelvic surgery (prostatectomy, hysterectomy), hormonal treatment, etc. This paper presents trends that impact prevalence, market segmentation, product requirements and marketing strategies – including the impact of social media.

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 Last Modified: November 1, 2011