Spinnova working to create yarn from wood fibre

Spinnova Ltd. is a research and product development company developing yarn thread technology that was launched at the Technical Research Centre of Finland VTT. The Finnish company is working to bring to industrial scale a process that creates yarn from wood fibre using a wet spinning technique.

Spinnova is developing fibre to yarn (F2Y) technology which is totally different from traditional textile yarn production. F2Y technology uses no dissolution chemicals to dissolve wood fibre to a polymer level and regenerate cellulosic filaments. Instead the technology allows the production of novel, low cost and environmentally friendly textile yarns for filaments made directly from wood fibres through a wet spinning process.

According to the company, the technique is ideal for refining Finnish long fibre-length woods, such as that of pine and spruce species. It is the only technology which can be used to manufacture yarn directly from wood fibres without chemical processing.

Spinnova has attracted EUR 1.95 million in investments. Their breakthrough process requires no extra chemical treatments for the pulp fibres. This means that their F2Y threads are totally recyclable, environmentally friendly and cost competitive products made of wood fibres. They turn wood into fabric and hence known as the wood fabric company.

Spinnova Ltd. has won the international biorefinery competition in February 2015 organized by the Ministry of Employment and the Economy with its new textile fibre production technology for its wood fibre yarn project.