You need to be a chameleon, able to adapt and not easily scared. Tackling a big problem by splitting it into a set of smaller problems
It’s not every day that we get the chance to interview powerhouses in the industry, people with decades of experience and priceless knowledge. Jean-Luc De Rycke is one of these people. With over 35 years of experience, Jean-Luc is the Director of Sustainable Development at Utexbel, a Belgium-based textile group. From fiber to finished fabric, Utexbel is the market leader in public procurement, industrial protective workwear, leisure wear, and technical textiles.
“Utexbel has a long history”, Jean-Luc begins. “The company was founded in 1929, a year of crisis. It was born from a merger of several farm families, and until this day it remains a family business. Utexbel is part of Belgium’s great textile tradition. At the time of the Second World War, our little city of Ronse had 25,000 inhabitants; 21,000 of them worked in the textile industry. You could say that, apart from the pastor, the notary, and the schoolmaster, everyone worked in textiles”, Jean-Luc jokes.
“During its first years, Utexbel specialised in the spinning, weaving, and production of cotton yarns and fabric. The company’s first business focused on the production of raincoat fabrics,” Jean-Luc says. “When I started working at Utexbel, 35 years ago, we mainly produced polyester cotton, some for military applications, other for raincoats, sportswear, and different fashion fabrics. Nowadays, we produce about 3,000 tons of yarn in our open-end spinning mill and about 1,000 tons of wool yarn per year”.
“Thirty years ago, we introduced aramid fibers to create highly specific and functional yarns with a limited chemical finish. You can make a cotton raincoat, for example, through chemical finishings, but that’s quite environmentally damaging. Using aramid fibers significantly reduces the negative environmental impact of the production process”.
We’re one of the few generation-old companies that can proudly say that we manufacture local European textile products
“Utexbel has become a rather unique company in the textile world. It’s completely autonomous, and one of few fully, vertically integrated textile enterprises”, Jean-Luc says. “From fiber to weaving, we handle all production processes in-house. We have our own spinning mill, weaving mill, and our own business, all located in the vicinity of Utexbel’s birthplace, Ronse”.
The best way to learn is by taking matters into your own hands and carefully analysing the different specificities in front of you
“The power of Utexbel is our short-chain commercial channels. The brave choice our management made years ago to keep our spinning mills in our own hands, local and European, and not outsource them like many others did, is what keeps us being a pioneer in our industry. Our short chain allows us easy access to the basic elements necessary for development and production,” Jean-Luc says.
The biggest challenge we face as an industry today is to develop circular products successfully
“In recent years we’ve been focusing on the development of circular products”, Jean-Luc says. “We’re trying to find answers to reuse a large number of fabrics produced in Europe today. For this purpose, we’ve developed our ‘Dr. Green’ assortment. These are fabrics intended for hospital clothing, of which the raw material derives from used hospital clothing”.
Jean-Luc: “We collect the white hospital jackets and other professional clothing items and remove the non-textile materials and colour accents, leaving us with an entirely white textile mass. That mass is then shredded and mixed with virgin fibers to create new yarns and new cloth that can be washed a hundred times, thus remaining in use for about two to three years. The goal of ‘Dr. Green’ is to make repurposed textiles and clothing with a long lifespan, remaining highly functional and maintaining a high-performance level”.
“In addition to ‘Dr. Green’, we’ve also developed a range of circular yarns based on pre-consumer waste, unlike Dr. Green’s, which is made from post-consumer waste. Pre-consumer waste is mainly the cutting waste from confectionery. This offers the advantage of being higher quality since it hasn’t been washed and contains no non-textile materials”.
Jean Luc: “Industrial waste is our third material source. Industrial waste still comes in vessel form. With these, we can re-spin yarns and create new yarns or woven fabrics”.
Our biggest strength and survival in a challenging industry is that, no matter what, we keep listening to our customers and focus on product development
“In 35 years, I’ve seen big changes in the industry,” Jean-Luc starts. “More than thirty years ago, the main focus was quality. The general debate back then was: what do we offer and where are we positioned compared to our competitors? Quality certification was pivotal. Along the way, there was a big trend to automate both the spinning and weaving levels. Many of our colleagues/competitors invested in this automation, but that also meant limiting their product variation which proved to be deadly to many of these companies. At Utexbel we never jumped on this trend, instead, we kept listening to our customers and stayed focused on product development. This eventually became and remains our strength”.
Listening to and monitoring the different and changing needs of every product and production process allows us to continuously improve. For this, we’ve developed our own, unique integrated system
“We often forget, but the textile process is a long and complex process. The fibers that enter the spinning mill today will leave as a fabric six months later. Things change in six months’ time, therefore communication with our client is pivotal,” Jean-Luc says. “Listening to your customer becomes even more important when you work for public services. You have to be very well informed about the costs and standards associated with the services. We dedicate ourselves to developing an intricate system around the complexities of our industry”.
“The system enables every element of our production process to be in the loop with the right specifications to make the right product. It allows us to create a highly functional, and up-to-date development dynamic that can be applied to different products. This is how a product and production process advances,” Jean-Luc adds.
“During the last ten years, the creation of an integrated system of product specifications has proven to be even more important because of the addition of sustainable aspects to product requirements”, Jean-Luc elaborates. “The biggest challenge of working with a system like this is dealing with the abundance of regulations. If you manage to overcome this, the system will work to your advantage”.
Success depends on a myriad of details. AI only helps when you pay attention to detail and can provide it with the right basic information
“To not get overwhelmed with our ‘system’ and create the best AI tool possible, we need to be detailed and extremely well-organised,” Jean-Luc says. “Textile production is complex if you want to control all parameters. Circular production makes things even more complex”.
“From fiber to yarn to fabric, textile production is a sequence of many processes. There are primary properties like cloth weight, that are quite manageable, but secondary characteristics like air permeability, for example, are less manageable, and nowadays these are more and more in demand. AI lightens complexity and increases efficiency, but only if we feed the system well”.
My generation grew up with technological evolution, we’ve seen and absorbed a lot, and we had to change a lot. The younger generations are born into much more complex structures. I believe AI can be helpful here
Thank you, Jean-Luc, for enriching us with your many years of experience.
