by ACTON, Mass. – The Haartz Corporation, a leader in highly engineered textile materials and Green Theme Technologies Inc., a leader in waterless and PFAS-free textile finishing, have partners “to revolutionize how textiles are finished in the United States,” the companies said.
The first of its kind in the North American market, GTT’s PFAS-free and waterless EMPEL textile finishing platform eliminates harmful chemicals from all levels of textile finishing without the use of water. The new partnership will allow GTT’s tech to be used across Haartz’s product line, including furniture, automotive, and apparel categories.
Developed by GTT, the EMPEL platform can apply a wide variety of finishes, including durable water repellent, anti-wicking, durable stain release and more to a near limitless number of textiles. EMPEL uses sustainable “clean chemistry” to eliminate contamination by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) during the textile manufacturing process through a waterless process.
“Haartz is the perfect partner for GTT,” Martin Flora, vice president of business development for GTT, said in a release “They are world leaders in scaling finished fabric technologies through world-class manufacturing and testing facilities. With their various product categories, including apparel, furniture and automotive, our partnership brings textile innovation to North America and helps drive a positive and sizable environmental impact.”
Independent tests conducted by Bureau Veritas and Okeotex confirm EMPEL uses a nontoxic and water-free hydrocarbon monomer solution that is polymerized when applied to fabrics, wrapping each individual yarn with a high-performance finish, the release said. Testing reveals EMPEL outperforms existing C0 and C6 fluorocarbon water repellent options.
As PFAS bans accelerate across the country and around the world, forward thinking brands like Haartz are taking the lead to adopt high performance and sustainable solutions, the release noted. Performance apparel brands such as Black Diamond, TREW Gear, Stoney Creek, and Artilect are currently selling apparel products that use EMPEL. Haartz holds the only US license for the EMPEL process and plans to scale production with several household brands.
“We continually push our manufacturing boundaries to bring the cleanest, highest performance products to market,” said Matt Williams, vice president of global automotive exteriors and new markets at Haartz. “Just as we have done throughout our long history serving automotive markets, we’re approaching this unique problem with a unique sustainable solution and we’re looking forward to bringing this new enhanced technology with a lower carbon footprint to US manufacturing.”
To see a demonstration of GTT’s durable water repellent performance, click here.
