Hard as steel or the granules from which the threads are made
A&E Gütermann can do both: hard as steel and yarns that are made from recycled PET granules. And the product range and the areas on which it impacts of the long-established company from Freiburg are going to extend distinctly in the future.
“We have recently become part of the newly formed network ‘Elevate Textiles’”, says Managing Director Jürgen Drescher. Together with joint-venture partners A&E, Burlington, Cone Denim and Safety Components, the company, with its European focus, is looking to make a particularly good showing in countries like the USA, Mexico and China. Drescher is greatly looking forward to the collaboration: “All our partners have been established for at least 100 years.”
Today, the products of A&E Gütermann (this partnership is already four years old), range from threads that anyone can buy for private use to high-performance industrial threads made of Kevlar with a steel core, capable of withstanding temperatures of 1,450 °C without damage and without burning. “Areas of application include, for instance, insulated enclosures for gas turbines,” says Fabian Laukhart from Gütermann. “They reach temperatures of 700 °C. So that their performance is not impeded, they are clad in insulation specially designed for turbines.”
Along with many other yarns for the fashion industry, technical textiles and the automotive industry (seat-belts, airbags etc), Gütermann also supplies sewing thread made from recycled PET granules, as well as thread made from Lyocell, a cellulose derivative that simply doesn’t rot. And, as has always been the case, there are still the traditional cotton yarns. The Freiburg company has not by any means neglected its ecological footprint either and shows this at “Sustainability at Texprocess” at the fair. Over the past few years, for instance, their electricity consumption has dropped by 7 % per kilogram of yarn. CO2 emissions have also dropped per kilogram of sewing thread – by 11 %. Water consumption was down by 48 % and 16 A&E Gütermann sites produced no landfill waste at all in 2017.
