Posted October 30, 2017

 

By Seshadri Ramkumar

 

LUBBOCK, Texas – The nonwovens sector is poised to have good growth and there is growing optimism in the sector as it metamorphoses into a high-performance engineered fabrics industry.

 

The Technical association of the Pulp and Paper Industry, popularly known as TAPPI, is organizing an international nonwovens conference developed by its Nonwovens Division, NET, from April 16-18, 2018 in Charlotte, N.C.

 

Dave Rousse, president of Cary, N.C.-based INDA, Association of the Nonwoven Fabrics Industry, which has about 365 companies as its members, will keynote and speak about the state of the nonwoven industry at the Nonwovens Conference of TAPPI.

 

The event offers several added advantages to professionals in the nonwovens, textiles and technical textiles sector as it is co-located with TAPPI’s leading technical conference, PaperCon. Attendees will benefit from listening to sessions in allied disciplines such as papermaking, pulp, etc. PaperCon is the “go to” place for people in wet-laid and pulp sectors. Nonwoven and paper technologies are closely related and this conference will enable crossbreeding of ideas, which can take the nonwoven sector to the next phase, i.e., engineered performance fabrics.

 

“The synergies of TAPPI’s nonwoven conference with the larger TAPPI PaperCon bring out the natural history of all nonwoven processes to the first real nonwoven paper. Today the two industries still share common technologies, equipment and supplier base that gives this conference a very strong base,” said Pete Wallace, TAPPI Fellow and nonwoven industry veteran based in Morganton, N.C.

 

The nonwovens conference will begin on the afternoon of April 16 with the presentation from Rousse. According to a latest report from INDA, the durable nonwoven sector is expected to have faster growth than disposables, showcasing that there are a lot of opportunities for nonwovens as engineered fabrics.

 

“I am delighted to address the TAPPI nonwovens conference and look forward to meeting the many members of the paper industry who also produce nonwovens, either as a wet-laid material or as a composite with paper,” Rousse said.

 

In speaking about the event, Larry Montague, president and CEO of TAPPI, which has about 8,477 members, said, “You never know where the next great idea will come from, but I assure you that conferences with combined settings is very likely to be one of those places.”

 

Organizers are accepting abstracts for presentations and more information about the event is available at www.netincevent.org.

 

Dr. Seshadri Ramkumar, Ph.D, FTA (honorary), is a professor at the Nonwovens & Advanced Materials Laboratory at Texas Tech.

INDA President Rousse to keynote international nonwovens conference