Kelheim Fibres has joined Recycling Atelier Augsburg, a unique centre for research and development in the field of textiles and nonwovens recycling.

It is located at the Institute of Technical Textiles, an affiliated institute of Augsburg University of Applied Sciences and was founded in June 2022 together with twelve partners from the German textile industry.

“The Recycling Atelier combines the most important processes of textile recycling and offers holistic and comprehensive research along the value chain,” explains Georg Stegschuster, head of the unit. “As such, it allows scientists to carry out research on all of the process steps of textile recycling – from material analysis to sorting, preparation and textile processing, as well as sustainable product design. Comprehensive data collection and the use of artificial intelligence and new materials play a central role.”

    “In new business development as well as fibre and application development, we follow the open innovation concept – the cooperation with the Recycling Atelier offers us an ideal platform for this,” adds Maik Thiel, project manager at Kelheim.

Kelheim’s high-quality viscose fibres consist of cellulose and are used worldwide for products in areas such as hygiene, textiles,and technical applications.

Recycled cotton fibres are often very short or of uneven length, which makes the further processing of 100% recycled materials based on them a challenge. This is where the speciality fibres from Kelheim come into play – their addition will enable the production of high-quality new products, such as nonwovens. In the future, the fibres provided by Kelheim will also be made from recycled pulp.

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