A consortium of Portuguese textile companies – Calvelex, Mundifios, Paulo de Oliveira and Riopele – together with China’s Kingdom Holdings, one of the world’s leading producers of flax and hemp yarn, are now building Portugal’s first wet-spinning mill for flax and hemp. The facility is expected to create around 250 jobs and represents an investment of about 30 million euros.
Nafilux and Nau Verde
The facility, known as Nafilux by Nau Verde, is located in Rebordões in Santo Tirso, in a former industrial building of 15,000 square metres. The company behind it, Nau Verde, is a Portuguese start-up built up in collaboration between the four leading Portuguese textile companies and Kingdom Holdings.
Bringing Production Back to Europe
The idea is to bring back part of the textile value chain – currently strongly concentrated in Asia – to Portugal and Europe. Europe remains an important producer of flax and hemp fibres, but much of the raw material is today shipped to Asia to be processed through wet spinning. The finished yarn then returns to the European market for use in fabrics, clothing and other textile products. This is the gap Nau Verde now wants to fill.
Higher Value Added
With the new wet-spinning mill, Portugal can produce yarn aimed mainly at higher-value market segments, responding to the growing demand for natural, traceable raw materials with a smaller ecological footprint. According to the latest information, this is Portugal’s only wet-spinning mill for flax and one of the few in Europe producing 100% premium flax yarn. The project also includes the use of hemp, another natural fibre considered strategic for developing more sustainable textile products.
The Lusitano Project
Beyond the facility, the Lusitano project’s mobilising agenda, within the PRR (Portugal’s recovery and resilience plan), aims to develop a production chain that can make yarn from natural and recycled fibres and then produce new textile and clothing products with higher value added, according to the report.
Source:
Portugees consortium en Chinese groep Kingdom Holdings gaan door met de plannen voor een vlas- en hennepfabriek — Fashion Network (Netherlands)
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