SUSTAFIT project shaped a roadmap for more sustainable future nonwovens aiming to boost the overall competitiveness of the Finnish nonwovens industry 

In the Business Finland co-research project SUSTAFIT (Sustainable fit-for-purpose nonwovens) three leading Finnish research organisations Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK), Aalto University and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland joined forces with multiple Finnish companies, and international research collaborators to tackle fundamental sustainability challenges related to widely used nonwoven products. The project set out to outline segment specific sustainability strategies around the use of sustainable and recycled fibres, and their processing into multiple nonwoven products. The project also intended to enhance understanding on the jointly identified knowledge gaps and boost the overall attractiveness of sustainable fibres for nonwoven applications in addition to supporting the Finnish industry to improve its competitiveness and broaden the opportunities in the versatile and fast growing sustainable nonwoven markets. 

ExpandFibre team was very glad to sit down with SUSTAFIT Project Manager Pia Hautamäki, Principal Lecturer at the Applied Research Center of Tampere University of Applied Sciences, to discuss and reflect back on the finished project. Joining Pia to look back at the highlights of the initiative were the former SUSTAFIT Project Manager Virpi Rämö, now working as a Principal Scientist, Textile Applications, at Kemira Oyj, in addition to Maija Rouhiainen, Director,  R&D & Lab at Chempolis Ltd., and Jukka Rantanen, Business Development Manager at Sulzer Pumps Finland Oy. 

Background to the project

To start, Pia Hautamäki noted how wonderful it was to reconnect with old SUSTAFIT colleagues for the virtual interview while she proceeded to kick off the discussion on the project that came to its official close at the end of September 2024: “I was lucky to be part of the project ever since we kicked off the activities in October 2022 – first as a Work Package Leader and then starting from January 2024 onwards until the end of the project as the Project Manager overseeing all SUSTAFIT activities. I want to highlight that Virpi Rämö had a fundamental role in the initiation of the project including gathering together the project consortium, and she did a wonderful job leading the initiative before moving to her current job at Kemira. As the year 2024 comes to its close, our main focus has been closing the project reporting towards Business Finland by end of January 2025. As SUSTAFIT was a Co-Research project without parallel company projects, the plan is to hopefully continue the excellent collaboration with the industrial partners in a new Co-Innovation project in the future. Perhaps the most significant deliverable for us has been the SUSTAFIT practical workbook, which is aiming to give a comprehensive overview of the world of sustainable nonwovens. I’m very grateful to all the collaborators who helped to shape up this valuable public resource.” 

Project highlights 

Maija Rouhiainen from Chempolis was happy to offer her insights into the project from a viewpoint of a biomass fractionation technology developer: “Our team at Chempolis was actively participating with the Fortum Bio2X team during SUSTAFIT, with our primary role being the straw pulp provider for Fortum Bio2X, who would then further work on the actual application testing. Our primary aim within the project was to assess nonwovens as a completely new potential future application area for our biomass fractions, namely cellulose. We were of course very grateful for all the new knowledge and expertise gained throughout the project. We identified the straw-based pulp produced by the Chempolis technology being different from the currently available textile grade dissolving pulps, so it was very interesting to take part in the work with our own unique pulp. It’s also worth noting that the company role of Chempolis is slightly different, as we are strictly a technology licenser, and thus not active players in the nonwovens industry by ourselves. However, it’s very important to understand where the main business opportunities are located – both now and in the future – in order to take our biomass fractionation technology forward along the best possible path together with our customers. The resources of SUSTAFIT, including the publicly available workbook mentioned by Pia, will be most definitely studied also in the future by our team, as this important topic is revisited.” 

Jukka Rantanen continued to discuss the highlights of the project from the viewpoint of Sulzer Pumps Finland – a key technology supplier for multiple industries across the globe: “For us at Sulzer Pumps the main motivation within SUSTAFIT was to explore potential future opportunities for growing our business. As the more traditional business areas for us – pulp and paper industries – have been experiencing limited growth in recent times, it has become apparent to us that nonwovens and textiles could be very interesting new opportunities for us. Understandably we’d need additional understanding and insights on these industries, as the processes in general are different to paper and pulp industries, and the used materials behave very differently to normal paper grade pulp when pumped, for example. Looking ahead, we’re still planning our own potential research project within this theme, and overall we’re very excited to learn more and see how the textile and nonwovens industries develop going forward. Connecting with the right partners and matching them with the most suitable technology from our portfolio could potentially open up new business opportunities, which is a very exciting prospect for us at Sulzer.” 

Virpi continued on the consumer engagement work and Kemira’s role in nonwovens in general: “The consumer engagement work during SUSTAFIT was carried out by TAMK focusing on the recycling of nonwoven materials – a very important topic. The consumers have an important role to play as nonwoven materials can easily end up in the wrong recycling stream, which is a real challenge when developing more sustainable solutions for the nonwovens industry. Overall, SUSTAFIT was a real learning experience for the Kemira team, which I joined at the start of 2024. In general, we see great potential for nonwovens in the company, as they are a truly global business, and we have complimentary R&D activities on three continents in the US, Europe and Asia. We will closely follow all initiatives within this topic and continue assessing the applicability of Kemira’s chemical solutions for nonwovens.” 

Pia continued: “One of the key focus areas for us during SUSTAFIT was assessing the business potential of sustainable nonwovens, which are largely based on cellulose-based raw materials. We had excellent dialogue with the 17 industrial collaborators, and we mapped together the most potential application areas for sustainable nonwovens and made detailed efforts trying to build a comprehensive picture on the customer needs for these new materials, in addition to pinpointing the most feasible business potential for the industrial actors. Also, strong international collaboration was a crucial component of SUSTAFIT. We made great connections to leading global research actors for textiles and nonwovens including The Nonwovens Institute in North Carolina, USA, and NIRI in Leeds, UK – just to name few examples.” 

Next steps 

As mentioned, the now concluded SUSTAFIT project was a Business Finland co-research project with the most likely continuation being a potential future co-innovation initiative. Pia opened up the topic by offering insights on the future plans: “We at TAMK have just recently launched a new Business Finland funded textiles themed research project in collaboration with VTT, in which we’re focusing on the key topics of carding (a process of separating individual fibres in textile production), consumer understanding and other insights on the customer perspective. Regarding the continuation of SUSTAFIT in the form of a new project, we’re at TAMK currently having fruitful exchanges with the key collaborators at VTT, Aalto, and LUT University with the overall aim of preparing a feasible project concept together with the industrial partners, who will be engaged soon in the process. The actual work packages are still taking their final shape but some key focus points for the new project include international growth and commercialization enabled by digitalization and the use of advanced digital tools.” 

Virpi and Jukka also both confirmed their participation in the newly launched Business Finland funded research project mentioned by Pia, seeing it as an important initiative for both Kemira and Sulzer Pumps Finland. Maija mentioned that Chempolis is understandably not taking part in the aforementioned project, as the company’s scope is currently elsewhere, as already explained. 

All four interviewees agreed that seeing the bigger picture is fundamentally important going forward when it comes to assessing the complete value chain and production chains for sustainable nonwovens. The role of communication was also highlighted as being elementary in supporting the creation of these comprehensive value chains. 

Interestingly the discussion was closed by exchanging experiences on the usage of generative AI within the biobased industries, and what the role of generative AI could be for sustainable nonwovens, as explained by Pia: “During SUSTAFIT we organised collaborative workshops together with industrial partners, in which we assessed the possible roles of digital platforms and AI for future sustainable nonwovens. I see that for many sustainable nonwoven manufactures the gap between them and the consumers is still quite wide, so could the power of AI be used to tackle many of the practical challenges of sustainable nonwovens, for example the pricing of these novel products?” 

Jukka, Virpi and Maija all agreed that the potential of generative AI is immense for the biobased industries in general and more specifically also for the development and commercialization of sustainable nonwovens. However, all interviewees agreed that in general the exploitation of AI is still in its infancy for many companies with a wider-reaching deployment most likely taking place in the near future. Perhaps most importantly everyone agreed that the pace at which digital tools and AI in general are developing is immense with rapid changes happening constantly, as noted by Maija: “When we were planning SUSTAFIT few years back, we had almost no idea on the potential of AI, so from that perspective the world looks very different now.”   

In photo from left: Inka Honkala, Maria Änkö, Olamide Badara and Pia Hautamäki (Photo credit: Erica Dahlström-Dezonne)

SUSTAFIT project fact sheet 
Project duration: October 1st, 2022 – September 30^th, 2024
Project type: Business Finland Co-Research 
Project funding: Business Finland, research partners and the participating companies 
Project partners and co-operators: Fortum, Kemira, Lounais-Suomen Jätehuolto, Spinnova, Nordic Bioproducts Group, NordShield, Lixea, UPM, Valmet, Sulzer, Fiber-X, Anpap, SharpCell, Paptic, JedX Medcare, Rester and Mirka. 

International research collaboration: The Nonwovens Institute, EDANA, Sächsisches Textilforschungsinstitut e.V. (STFI) and NIRI Nonwovens Innovation. 

Project homepage: https://projects.tuni.fi/sustafit/ 

SUSTAFIT practical workbook “Sustainable Nonwovens of the Future – From Research Into Business Opportunities”: https://www.theseus.fi/handle/10024/865619