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Lenzing Produced a New Micro Fiber using Edelweiss Technology

21 Feb '12
3 min read

At the spring trade shows in Paris the Modal fiber experts, Lenzing, are presenting the newly developed “eco MicroModal®” fiber, produced using Edelweiss technology.

Lenzing the inventor of the Modal fiber

Lenzing, the fiber specialists, have been producing cellulose fibers for almost 75 years. Everything started with Viscose. The quest to find increasingly superior fibers, and in particular fibers with better tenacities, led to the invention of the Modal fiber in the 1960's. This Lenzing development was based on the High Wet Modulus fiber. In the middle of the 80's, the Modal fiber was registered with BISFA1 as a generic trademark with the help of Lenzing. Lenzing was able to establish Modal fibers in the textile industry. Innovative products with new properties were commercial successes and today are essential to the market.

As an exclusive supplier of Modal fibers, Lenzing has served the market for decades. Lenzing Modal® is featured today in many designer collections and brand manufacturers also favor this fiber. The wide range of products has won customers over, too, because of the fiber's softness and naturalness. Modal's market success is demonstrated by the significant production expansion at the Lenzing manufacturing site. In the last 10 years, the production of Modal fibers has more than tripled – from 30,000 tons to more than 100,000 tons (in the year 2012).

Eco-technology for the production of Modal

Lenzing can look back on a long history of environmental technology. As early as 1963, the very first steps were taken to recover the chemicals used in pulp production. This was followed by further accomplishments such as the recovery of acetic acid and furfural from the substances contained in timber as well as the recovery of chemicals in fiber production. Today Lenzing boasts a recovery rate of more than 95% and is respected as an expert in the field of wood-organic refinery.

Lenzing developed the proprietary technology required to do this and it is not commercially available. Thus Lenzing's plant is the only cellulose fiber plant in the world which produces pulp and fiber in a symbiotic process at a single site. This full integration allows for the high recovery rate and, in all steps of production, care can be taken to be sensitive to the environment. Throughout the global fiber industry, Lenzing's approach is recognized as quite unique.

Lenzing's latest accomplishment in environmental fiber technology is known as Edelweiss. Edelweiss-technology is based on oxygen-based chemistry which is more eco-friendly than the conventional one. Thus Lenzing Modal® Edelweiss is the only Modal fiber which satisfies the highest environmental standards and is even CO2-neutral.

New - MicroModal® Edelweiss

The latest eco fiber innovation is called MicroModal® Edelweiss. Produced in an eco-friendly process known as Edelweiss, the micro fiber is particularly fine and luxurious. MicroModal® Edelweiss will be presented for the first time at the Parisian fabric trade shows in February 2012.
In addition to MicroModal®, ProModal®, Lenzing Modal® LOFT and MicroModal® AIR, this is the fifth Modal innovation Lenzing has created. Additional Modal innovations are planned for autumn 2012.

MicroModal® is a globally registered trademark of the Lenzing Group.

The Lenzing Group

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