Spinnova-Suzano tie-up aims to deliver 1m tonnes of fibre per year
Yarn manufacturer Spinnova has said a new factory it is to build in Finland with partner Suzano will help it build an annual production capacity of 1 million tonnes of wood pulp-derived fibre for the textile industry by 2031.
Spinnova launched as a spin-off from the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland in 2014. It turns wood fibres into yarn “without complex chemical processes”. Fashion retail groups H&M and Bestseller have been early adopters.
It opened a pilot factory in the university city of Jyväskylä, in central Finland, in 2019. In February this year, it announced that it would work with Suzano to open a commercial-scale factory. Based in Brazil, Suzano describes itself as the world’s leading producer of eucalyptus pulp and one of Latin America’s largest paper producers. It supplies certified micro-fibrillated cellulose (MFC) from which Spinnova makes fibres for textiles.
Suzano and Spinnova have formalised their partnership by launching a joint-venture operation called Woodspin. Jyväskylä will also be the location of the first Woodspin factory; construction has already begun and the factory should be operational before the end of 2022.
On making this announcement about the joint venture and the new factory, Spinnova said scaling to big volumes and providing the textile industry with a sustainable material that is competitively priced has been part of its vision from the start.
Chief executive and co-founder, Janne Poranen, said Spinnova’s technology is modular, flexible and easy to scale. He said the first factory would be “a great start to realising the vast, global opportunity of this innovation”.
