#Sustainability

2019-02-28

CHT Germany provides its textile customers with the right equipment for the future

The CHT Group with its headquarters in Tübingen has set the goal to become the preferred partner for sustainable specialty chemicals all over the world. In all of the business fields the product ranges are being permanently tested and increasingly substituted by future-oriented, more sustainable products. As far as possible, CHT has been developing alternatives which not only meet but even exceed legal regulations.

We live sustainability

It is our goal to completely substitute critical substances and to develop future-oriented alternatives even if the industry has not yet the demand for such solutions. Our business with binders for textile finishing, which are mainly applied in textile coating and pigment printing, is a successful example.

The dangerous goods classification by the European Union in 2016 led to clearly stricter legal provisions concerning formaldehyde.

In autumn 2017 classic binders, usually having low formadehyde contents, were strongly demanded by the German textile market. The CHT Group reacted promptly and invested in higher production capacities to meet the increased needs. Our production focused on new, completely formaldehyde-free binder technologies which even exceeded legal regulations and the textile industry’s demand.

The products are suited for manufacturing textile products according to Ökotex 100 product class 1, the highest possible standard which generally does not even have to be met.

Formaldehyde-free binders have many benefits but some customers remained sceptical. After all, many customers expected that the formaldehyde-free technology would lead to higher costs and necessary adjustments in production processes.

Nevertheless, in 2018 the team of CHT Germany was able to sell more than 500 tons of formaldehyde-free binders in Germany alone. With its team of experts CHT supported the necessary adjustments of processes and recipes professionally and without additional costs. Moreover, the innovative binders are on average 25 % more effective than the former variants containing formaldehyde and they lead to improved fastness levels.

“The successful new orientation of our binder business has strongly contributed to textile sustainability in various ways,“ Mr Alfons Erb, Head of Sales Textile Auxiliaries at CHT Germany GmbH states. He explains this statement: “On the one hand, formaldehyde is persistently eliminated. Then, the concentrations allow for a lower quantity of binders in the process. Finally, resources are saved in logistics as lower volumes need to be transported.“

The example of the textile binders shows that CHT has been working on being the preferred partner for sustainable chemical solutions and products in all of the textiles applications. The CHT Group offers among others a broad range of formaldehyde-free fixing agents for a completely formaldehyde-free implementation of textile functionalities. Meanwhile, most effect pastes for textile printing and further coating products offered by us have been substituted by completely formaldehyde-free alternatives.

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