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May 17, 2005
Reinventing textiles
Textiles: a dying industry, right? Doomed to be taken over by the Chinese, or the Bangladeshis, as Ricardo's law of comparative advantage shifts the production to the lowest wage countries -- just as happened when it shifted out of New England to the South.
Well, think again. There are textiles ... and there are textiles. A recent Forbes article Threadbare No More (actually about Raleigh-Durham as one of the Best Places) describes how the textile industry is being reinvented:
Inside a small classroom at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, three Ph.D. students and two engineering professors wrestle with the three Cs-calculations, charts and cloth. Cloth? Yes, they're applying their considerable brainpower to building a better T shirt.
Not just any T shirt. This one has tiny silver particles containing electronic transmitters that are grounded, pasted and then screen-printed into nonwoven fabric. The shirt can "talk" to satellites or monitor your respiration and heartbeat. You won't be able to pick up this item at the Gap or the Sharper Image for a while, not until the researchers figure out how to pack in miniature batteries to power the transmitters. Still, the project, funded by the National Textile Center-a consortium of universities with federal funding for research-has already sparked the interest of the U.S. Army, Nike, Sara Lee's apparel unit and the medical community. "We are on the lunatic fringe," laughs Edward Grant, one of the profs and director of NC State's Center for Robotics & Intelligent Machines.
A small revolution is underway. Grant is one of 345 or so scientists in Raleigh-Durham, N.C. working to reinvent and revive the American textile industry.
The article goes on to describe the rise of nonwoven fabric:
These fabrics are melted and pressed, not woven or sewn, and can be much stronger than traditional cloths. They have little or no natural fiber but are manufactured from plastics-petroleum derivatives like polypropylene, polyethylene, rayon, polyester-with wood pulp or cotton mixed in to improve absorbency. Cheaper to make, such products require just a handful of workers at a single plant to produce 15,000 metric tons of nonwovens a year.
Not everyone is happy about the change:
The rapid shift to high-tech fibers worries cotton growers. Their trade group, Cotton Inc., spends $20 million a year developing fabric fibers, colors and finishes and another $46 million to ensure that garmentmakers keep using cotton.
The Forbes article essential writes cotton off. I won't be so sure. That same spirit of innovation may well bring new life to cotton - just as the cotton gin did 210 hundred years ago.
Posted by Ken Jarboe at May 17, 2005 8:54 AM
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