Zschimmer & Schwarz, a global supplier of chemical specialties and auxiliaries, offers tailor-made solutions for a wide variety of industries. The company’s Fiber & Textile Auxiliaries Division is specialized on solutions for man-made fibers and textiles that always meet highest demands. With FASALOOP, Zschimmer & Schwarz now introduces an innovative coating technology designed to enable the broad market implementation of recyclable artificial turf and carpet systems. The development originated at Lefatex GmbH, a company of the Zschimmer & Schwarz Group, and is now being rolled out to the Zschimmer & Schwarz production network.

Conventional constructions often rely on multi-material composites using styrene butadiene or styrene acrylic latex systems and/or polyurethane backings. Artificial turf, for example, typically consists of polyolefin fibers tufted into a polyolefin primary backing, while a secondary backing made of styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR) is commonly applied to provide adhesion and stability. At the end of life, this complex material structure makes separation for material-recycling particularly challenging. This is where FASALOOP is making the change: The new coating technology replaces conventional SBR-latex or polyurethane backings with polyester- and polyolefin-based coating systems. This allows the design of mono-material constructions that can be mechanically recycled without complex material separation.

“With FASALOOP, we are offering an attractive solution for a circular economy,” says Volker Krebs, Global Director Fiber & Textile Auxiliaries Division at Zschimmer & Schwarz. “By enabling mono-material constructions, we help our customers to move towards more resource-efficient product designs while maintaining the required performance.”

The FASALOOP portfolio includes two technology families: FASALOOP PET, designed for polyester-based carpet constructions, and FASALOOP POD, developed for polyolefin-based artificial turf systems. Further information on FASALOOP and the entire product portfolio of the Fiber & Textile Auxiliaries Division can be found on the Zschimmer & Schwarz website.

FASALOOP^® is an EU trademark registered in the European Union by Zschimmer & Schwarz.