WAKEFIELD - Welcoming industry stakeholders, manufacturers, convertors and end-users from across the industry, the first Sustainable Nonwovens webinar, which explored the major issues around facemasks and the complexity of the PPE supply chain in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, is now available for download.
Key topics explored at the webinar, Face masks and Covid-19: The new Golden Fleece of fabrics, included bottlenecks in the supply chain, the robustness of (or lack of) PPE supply chains, and what lessons governments could learn for future pandemics.
Speaking at the webinar, Adrian Wilson, consulting editor, Sustainable Nonwovens outlined how meltblown nonwoven fabric has become the hottest commodity of the coronavirus crisis. "A spate of new meltblown line installations in the West has been announced in the past couple of months and many other companies have repositioned their existing capacity to making N95 face mask materials," Wilson said. "In addition, the two leading manufacturers of spunmelt nonwoven machines – Reifenhäuser Reicofil and Oerlikon Nonwoven – both based in Germany, have introduced shortened delivery times and turned over their own pilot lines to the production of emergency supplies for face masks around the clock."
Wilson also noted how PPE shortages have exposed a major fault line in the globalized world order that existed before Covid-19 and is already being forensically scrutinized for the future. "Many questions will be asked, and not least about the environmental impact of the world’s complete reliance on single-use, plastic based products," he said.
The webinar also examined why meltblown nonwovens are so crucial to facemask production and why there has been such a bottleneck.
To view the webinar, CLICK HERE
For information on future Sustainable Nonwovens events, please CLICK HERE to register.
