Low & Bonar announced the opening of a £26 million ($32.7 million) production facility that will manufacture Colback, its proprietary nonwoven premium brand fabric, in Changzhou City in the Yangtze River Delta. 

The new site will supply various applications to the flooring markets, building and automotive industries in both domestic and Asian regional markets. In addition, as demand escalates for cleaner air and water, the plant will supply a range of technical and textile solutions for air and water filtration usage.

Brett Simpson, CEO, comments, “It is our strategy to have production close to our core markets in order to secure short lead-times and provide world class service to our customers. China – and the rest of Asia Pacific – is a future core market for Low and Bonar Group. Having full control of the production process is essential to deliver products of a consistent high quality and performance.

“With our local and global customer focused teams and strong service network, we can optimize our processes in production, logistics and administration which brings benefits to our customers. This will also help to decrease our environmental impact by reducing the need to transport products from Europe or the USA to be sold in Asia.”

With majority of sales likely to come from Chinese domestic markets and the rest from APAC, the plant is also expected to meet global capacity requirements for Colback for the next five years. Covering an area of 29,600 sq. meters, the facility is based in Changzhou National Hi-Tech District, China’s economic development area with a history in textiles.

In the flooring industry, Colback is widely used as a primary backing in carpet tiles, high-grade patterned wall to wall carpeting and walk-off mats. The dimensional and thermal stability of Colback prevents carpets from bowing and skewing during processing and makes installation, especially pattern repeat, easier.

Alex Xu, country manager, China, says: “Colback is unique in the world of nonwovens in that it uses a two-step manufacturing process that is not easy to replicate; this gives us a great advantage to enable our customers to make unique products and helps us to gain market share. Our team located in Shanghai will provide sales and technical support to our customers in China and international customers moving into the Asia Pacific region.”