Clusterland Award for SALESIANER

The Clusterland Award for inter-company cooperation was presented for the eighth time in 2019, going this time to the collaborative project TEX2MAT, in which SALESIANER was also actively involved as a cooperation partner.

Recycling instead of landfill
Used textiles mostly end up in landfills or incinerators. The aim of the textile recycling project is to prevent the loss of valuable resources. At SALESIANER, the cotton/polyester blends mentioned above accumulate in large quantities when bed linen is thrown away. When it comes to recycling, the challenge above all lies in the composition of blended fabrics, which makes it very difficult to separate fibres cleanly from a technical standpoint. It is essential to completely separate the cotton here in view of the different chemical properties and the subsequent process of treating the polyfibres.

Innovative process for Austria as a business location
The aim was to develop a new process to enable the recycling of textile residues (cotton and polyester fibres), closing the material cycle from raw material to raw material and to reuse the “newly obtained raw materials”. Having been running for around one and half years, the project has now delivered some promising results. The new method is currently in the test phase and is considered to be trendsetting for the development location for the Austrian textile industry.

Cooperation as the key to success
Thomas Gittler, head of IMS at SALESIANER, also sees long-term advantages for the textile industry: “Different companies with a wide range of expertise pooling their resources for a common cause are evidence of how collaborative efforts can produce a positive output. Further steps still need to be taken of course to enhance the results. However, I am very satisfied with the progress of the cooperation so far and am naturally delighted that Tex2Mat has been awarded the Clusterland Award 2019.”

_{Further information on the Clusterland Award can be found here}