In textiles and apparel, there has been a great deal of focus on sustainability—or the lack thereof—in the industry. Much of the discussion has been around supply chain issues, waste, pollution, and how digital technologies, including digital printing, could help improve the picture.

Digital printing, of course, has significant environmental—and economic—benefits when properly implemented, including minimizing or eliminating the need for pre- and post-print fabric printing. But it still comprises a tiny percentage of the overall printed fabric market—projected to reach $2.7 billion worldwide by Research and Markets, with the overall global printed textile market estimated at about $150 billion…That puts the Research and Markets share estimate for digital textile printing at about 2%. Others quote a range of between 6% and 10%. Still, although the volumes are expected to grow significantly over the next few years, analog printing of textiles will retain the lion’s share of the market for some time to come. A CFO I once worked with called this the law of large numbers—when one sector has a hugely larger percentage of market share than a competing one, it can take a very long time for the balance to shift.

So although we spend a lot of time on digital textile printing on this site, it is also important to track what is happening in the industry at large. That’s why I was encouraged to see a recent article about German company adphos and the launch of its advancedNearInfraRed (aNIR) platform, designed to improve the efficiency of energy-intensive thermal processes in the textile and other industries. adphos Group is a family of privately owned companies focused on the development of adphosNIR® technology which dramatically reduces the time and space required for thermal processes. A technical description of the process can be found here.