The textiles manufacturing industry has come a lengthy way since the initial basic linen clothes had been created by New Stone Age people. These days, textiles manufacturers are just as likely to be making tough liners for landfill rubbish tips as they’re colourful patterned fabrics for the fashion industry.

Textiles are created by weaving, knitting, felting or bonding together many fibres or filaments (very lengthy fibres). Natural fibres have been utilized through the textiles business for hundreds, occasionally thousands of years. Fragments of linen cloth have been discovered in Scandinavia, for example, that are estimated to be about 7000 years old. Cotton has been cultivated since ancient times in China, India, Persia, Egypt and Peru. And it is believed that wool and hair from camels and goats have been turned into fabrics because humans first kept domestic animals. Even silk, the only organic filament was utilized by the Chinese as long ago as 2600 BC.

Modern materials

Synthetic fibres are fairly new additions to the textiles business. Originally, they were developed to replicate expensive silk filaments created in China and Japan. The initial commercial artificial silk, rayon, was invented in 1891 by a French scientist named Hilaire de Chardonnet. He discovered that hundreds of filaments could be created by forcing a polymer solution via a ’spinneret’ nozzle into a chemical bath.

To this day, synthetic fibres are produced utilizing similar spinning techniques. Nylon, acrylics, polyesters, polyvinyls, polyethylenes and olefins are just a few of the synthetic fibres and filaments used through the textile business to create durable, effortlessly cared-for fabrics. Synthetic fibres have also opened up new markets, particularly in business. Polymer fibres are used to make conveyor belts, ropes, brake linings, tyre reinforcements, filters and geotextiles for lining dams and landfill rubbish sites. In fact, they are so versatile that the worldwide consumption of synthetic fibres is now greater than that of cotton.