Making sustainable textile fibres available to all

Driven by the growing demand for clothes and textiles, global textile fibre production has doubled in the last 20 years and reached 109 million tons in 2020. This trend is expected to continue, and a further 34% increase is expected by 2030. At the same time, the textile industry is the second most polluting industry in the world. There is an obvious and urgent need to transform this growing industry sector into a more sustainable direction. Man-made cellulosic fibres (MMCF) are considered one of the environmentally friendly and sustainable alternatives to move the textile sector towards a more sustainable industry.

AFRY a main engineering and project partner in sustainable textile fibre development

AFRY has been the leading consultant and engineering partner to TreeToTextile from its early stages of project development in 2016, continuing to demonstration plant implementation engineering from 2020-2022.

In the project development phase, AFRY’s assignment included several pre-feasibility and feasibility studies, process design, up-scaling evaluations, and supplier pilot runs planning. The pre-feasibility and feasibility studies included investment and operational cost estimates and optimization for both the demonstration-sized and full-sized production plants. These studies were a base for TreeToTextile’s business case development.

In 2020, TreeToTextile was ready to start the engineering for its demonstration plant in Nymölla, Sweden and an investment decision followed in 2021. AFRY was again chosen as the main partner by TreeToTextile. In the demonstration plant implementation phase, AFRY was responsible for the engineering, project management and site services, also providing many additional services like permitting and procurement support as well as machine and IT solutions, including:

• Project Management
• Procurement support
• Process design
• Plant design, including layout, mechanical and piping, electrical, automation and instrumentation
• Civil design
• Automation, including hardware
• Design and supply of special machines for material handling
• Manufacturing execution IT system (MES), including warehouse management and traceability
• Construction management
• Commissioning
• Start-up support
• HSE management on site
• Environmental and building permitting support

Together with AFRY, we have overcome the challenges through close collaboration, flexibility, broad competence and most important of all, mutual commitment. AFRY and TreeToTextile have a long-lasting, mutually developing relationship that we hope to continue

Olli Ylä-Jarkko, Chief Technology Officer at TreeToTextile

I’m proud of the project team’s achievements, the co-operation with TreeToTextile and that the project has reached its targets. We wish TreeToTextile and Henric Höglund, the Plant Manager, and his team all the luck with plant operations and we look forward to future cooperation.

Christoffer Persson, Project Manager at AFRY