With our world facing a series of pressing environmental challenges, including natural resource depletion, climate change, and air, water and earth pollution, companies across all industries continue to reduce their dependence on non-renewable resources and focus on reducing their environmental footprint.
Textiles manufacturers and fashion brands, in particular, are under pressure – from consumers, regulatory bodies, and environmental organizations alike – to adopt more sustainable practices. Performance coating solutions using renewable feedstocks, such as biomass or renewable carbon, create a strong opportunity to reduce environmental impact across the textiles value chain and decouple from fossil-carbon-based resource consumption.
Renewable feedstocks entail the elimination of non-renewable carbon resources such as coal, oil, and natural gas as feedstocks for organic chemistry, otherwise known as de-fossilization.
Renewable-carbon feedstocks can be made either from bio-mass sources such as plants, from (post-consumer) recycle streams, or from carbon captured from industrial CO2 emissions. The plant-based feedstocks can come from vegetable-oil-based crops such as rapeseed, castor beans, canola, soybean, and sunflower, or from carbohydrate-rich crops like sugarcane, corn, sugar beet, or cassava. The oils or carbohydrates are typically extracted before being purified and modified.
Stahl has long been committed to delivering more sustainable coating solutions, in line with our belief that the coatings industry can play a key role in enabling high living standards within planetary boundaries. Our initiative aims to shape a better coatings industry and enable reduced environmental footprints across the whole value chain. In particular, we are committed to facilitating the transition from fossil to non-fossil-based raw materials, such as biomass, recycle, or captured-carbon-based feedstocks.
We are committed to providing our customers with coatings, and surface treatments that have a lower environmental impact, helping them reduce their carbon footprint, water usage, and energy consumption. These benefits extend to the end consumer as well. As part of this commitment, we strive to incorporate more renewable feedstocks into our own product portfolio. That’s why we launched the Stahl NuVera® range in 2020. Our dedication to innovation is evident in the fact that more than 30% of our R&D projects in 2022 were focused on ESG related developments. We have been working on replacing fossil-based raw materials in our products with more sustainable alternatives.
To find out more about our broader ESG efforts access our full Stahl 2022 ESG Report.
To help textiles converters increase their use of renewable solutions, Stahl developed NuVera®: a range of renewable-carbon polyurethanes targeted at synthetic construction applications. Since its 2020 launch NuVera® products have grown to become a versatile range of products that allow you to create virtually any synthetic or coated fabric fashion article. Whether the aim is creating a flexible material for a fashionable lady bag, a boot or a sports shoe, colourful leather goods, comfortable garment or furniture upholstery, our experts can always help select the right combination of below mentioned NuVera® products, to match your needs.
Our latest product additions also include recycle-feedstock-based ingredients, fully certified via a third-party Mass Balance approach. All aimed to help reduce the carbon footprint of the consumer articles created with them.
Stahl NuVera® renewable carbon-based products are compliant with the latest standards and regulations, including the Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC) Version 3.0 Manufacturing Restricted Substances List (MRSL).
Performance is always key when developing products that last and of course, Stahl NuVera® polyurethanes have the same performance that a conventional petrol-based equivalent has. This range of products opens new commercial opportunities for converters and brands, who can benefit from its sustainable value proposition.
Each product is designed for a different layer of a synthetic coating construction: the highly resistant pre-skin, the thick and flexible skin, and the adhesive. The table below shows an overview of the NuVera® renewable carbon based coating solutions, their properties, and ideal applications:
Figure 1: Overview of Stahl NuVera® portfolio and properties of each product
Each Stahl NuVera® product can be used to produce a diverse range of synthetic constructions that meet the technical market requirements for their intended application. To demonstrate this potential, we created sample constructions using NuVera® products for various applications: material for a fashion bag, upholstery material, a sports shoe upper, and multi-layer garment material.
We created these constructions using transfer coating: the layers were built up on a reusable release paper from the outer to the inner layer, before being laminated to the substrate. The fashion bag, upholstery, and sports shoe materials all use combinations of NuVera® polyurethanes in various layer thicknesses. The final articles created are free from any classified substances. Their total renewable carbon content varies depending on the combination of materials used and the application weight of each layer.
The fashion bag material was made using an innovative natural non-woven substrate made from waste pineapple leaf fibre. The Stahl NuVera®-based coating layer was applied to this substrate using the formulation shown below. Using the biobased substrate and Stahl NuVera® renewable-carbon polyurethanes, the final construction reached a total renewable carbon content of 75%, while still meeting the typical requirements for fashion materials, such as abrasion and wear resistance.
Figure 2: Visualization and formulation overview of the fashion bag material
The upholstery material example contains the NuVera® layers in the formulation shown below on a renewable, 100%-cotton substrate. The final construction meets the typical market requirements for high-end upholstery materials – strong abrasion performance, hydrolysis resistance, and flexibility – and has a total renewable carbon content of 74%.
Figure 3: Visualization and formulation overview of the upholstery material
As these examples demonstrate, the Stahl NuVera® portfolio enables textiles converters to create a diverse range of materials that meet the market requirements for their specific applications, while contributing to circularity through their renewable carbon content. Moving forward, we plan to continue expanding and fine-tuning the NuVera® range to improve its environmental impact and widen its applicability.
These plans include creating a wider range of solutions for each synthetic coating layer, working with our partners to incorporate more renewable-carbon materials, developing more sustainable crosslinkers to create a ‘whole package’ solution, expanding the NuVera® Q, NuVera® D and NuVera® MB portfolios, and formulating new ready-for-use NuVera® finishes. Above all, Stahl will continuously develop new technologies that reduce our dependence on fossil-based coatings – supporting more sustainable living for all.
For more information on Stahl’s NuVera® product range, check out our product page or contact us at communications@stahl.com
Or continue reading more about Stahl NuVera®.