At the start of each year, Specialty Fabrics Review surveys its readers to learn about current trends and business challenges and opportunities, to take a snapshot of our industry. As anticipated, inflation, the supply chain and hiring remain the top concerns, but revenues are up and growth plans are in the works for most respondents.

Making textile products has transitioned from a manual job to one that is largely automated, in part because of a worker shortage. The offshoring of jobs reduced the U.S. textile industry workforce from 3.8 million in 1975 to only 500,000 workers today, notes Frank Henderson, CEO of Henderson Sewing Machine Co. By using automated and robotic machines, this much smaller crew can get the work done.

Given the amount of attention sustainability efforts in the nonwovens industry have gotten in the past few years, it’s easy to think these conversations and initiatives are relatively new. The truth is that they’ve been part of the industry for decades.

The amount of water used and polluted in textile production is staggering. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, around 20% of all wastewater worldwide comes from fabric dyeing and treatment. Dyehouses in India and China are notorious for not only exhausting local water supplies but dumping untreated wastewater into local streams and rivers.

George Smith, vice president of operations for temporary structures for Sunbelt Rentals Inc. (and former president and CEO of Mahaffey USA), never intended to make a career out of the tent business.

wnings, tents, shade sails, marine upholstery, protective gear, furniture: Regardless of the end product, the fabric needs to perform in harsh conditions while looking good, keeping the planet green and fitting into a client’s budget. For our two-part annual showcase, we asked contributors to send us information about their latest high-performance textiles. We’ve organized the information into performance categories, and Part 2 is included in this issue. In the April issue, Part 1 of the showcase included fabrics that emphasize durability; flame retardance; health, safety and protection; performance; and water repellency.

The health and wellness market has been among the first to embrace advances in smart yarns and to take advantage of the versatility of engineered textiles. Supreme Corp., a producer of high-tech textiles and electrically conductive yarn and sewing thread, has created a revolutionary fabric called Thermoregulating Therapeutic Smart Fabric (TTSF), which it says can promote healing and enhance human performance. The company, based in North Carolina, recently announced a collaboration with Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA) to incorporate AFFOA’s monofilament yarn embedded with tiny LED lights. 

Natural light can help reduce energy usage in our buildings. This is a lesson known for centuries but seemingly forgotten after the 1940s with postwar technological advances in air conditioning (coupled with the Modernist design movement that declared “ornament is a crime”). These stripped-down building facades spoke volumes about a new era of high-tech materials like aluminum curtainwalls, entire buildings of plate glass and white baked-enamel paneling (think gas stations), suggesting sanitary buildings that resembled scientific laboratories—the wave of the future!

Smart textiles for health and well-being are becoming both more diverse and interconnected. Three key market segments—home health care, health care facilities and work environments—are especially worth noting. Home health care has come to dominate the wearable medical device market globally, with an estimated 54.5% share in 2021, according to a report by Grand View Research. When considered in conjunction with remote patient monitoring, this amounts to around 70% of the market.

Today’s warehouses are no longer just for storage. From being a showroom of products to providing a space for drying operations to housing all facets of inventory, today’s warehouses are multipurpose spaces that require well-defined organization and management to keep processes streamlined and efficient.

New textile products and processes are constantly being developed to meet the needs of the textile industry and other related industries, including aerospace, medicine, robotics, defense and more. Where do these new products and techniques originate?

These days in the fabric finishing world, many of the biggest tasks don’t even involve the latest and greatest advancements in fabric protection. There’s just as much effort, if not more, being made to improve the methods by which that finishing is accomplished.