Stricter legal requirements and changed consumer expectations are stimulating greater demand for textiles made from recycled materials. In India, one of the world’s largest textile markets, spinning mills are increasingly relying on Rieter’s semi-automated rotor spinning machine R 37 to meet rising demand. The R 37 is proving to be particularly suitable for opening up qualitatively more challenging areas of application for yarns made from recycled raw materials.
Mechanical recycling of textiles generates a high proportion of short fibers. This represents a particular challenge for the production of yarns using the ring and compact spinning process. Rotor spinning, therefore, is a proven alternative for processing raw material with a high short fiber content.
Until now, rotor-spun yarns with their specific properties have been used by spinning mills mainly for denim jeans fabrics or lower-grade applications. Due to increasing demand, more and more spinning mills in India are adapting their processes to meet increased requirements. Their aim is also to produce finer knitting yarns on rotor spinning machines from blends with recycled fibers that are well suited for T-shirts and sweaters.
The R 37 semi-automated rotor spinning machine is particularly suitable for this purpose. The R 37 produces yarns with high tenacity and uniformity. It allows high-quality yarns to be spun, even from blends with a high short fiber content. A decisive factor for economic efficiency is a high fiber yield combined with the highest possible trash elimination. With the R 37, the replaceable trash disposal channel allows optimal adaptation of the trash elimination to the recycled material. This also makes it possible to separate out yarn ends that are not completely fiberized. The R 37 thus extracts more impurities from the raw material than comparable machines, while retaining spinnable fibers for the yarn production process. This results in clear advantages: better yarn strength, greater productivity, and excellent spinning stability. In addition, the highly efficient drive system of the Rieter rotor spinning machine reduces power consumption.
This offers potential because the better the quality of the recycled rotor yarns, the more possible applications there are for sustainable textiles. Rieter is also further developing recycling technology for ring yarns to promote the creation of a circular economy in textiles.
More stories like this one are available in the company's report on “Key Data on the Environment, Social Issues and Corporate Governance”.