This week Technical Fibre Products celebrated the formal opening of its third manufacturing line, an investment that doubled the company’s production capacity in response to increasing demand for  innovative nonwovens across all markets. Sir James Cropper, honorary Ppresident of TFP’s parent company James Cropper PLC, formally opened the new nonwovens production line on September 16 alongside Martin Thompson, managing director of TFP. The opening ceremony was part of a day-long celebration event to mark both the expansion of the TFP business and a landmark 170 years of manufacturing for James Cropper PLC.

Martin Thompson, managing director of TFP, comments, “James Cropper PLC develops progressive, ideas-based companies with international reach and we proudly share our history as well as leading in our respective fields. TFP’s new production line delivers a stepwise increase in capacity for the business. It is a necessary step to meet rapidly increasing demand and facilitate delivery of the company’s successful growth strategy. The opening of the new line is just the latest exciting step in an accelerated program of capacity and capability improvements for the company; these have included the development and installation of the world’s first commercial nanocoating facility in Schenectady, US.”

The state-of-the-art line doubles TFP’s production capacity and represents a significant investment in the expansion of the business. The line is based on the current proprietary wetlaid technology but is engineered to extend production capabilities beyond previous constraints by increasing production width to over two meters, enabling the company to access new markets. TFP’s advanced nonwovens are exported worldwide and these highly specialized materials, renowned for their quality and range of functionality, provide innovative solutions across a number of growth industries.

Applications range from enabling the thermal management of the ESA satellite GAIA to playing a crucial role in facilitating the light weighting of the latest generation of commercial and defence aircraft. TFP has been specializing in developing nonwovens for highly technical and challenging applications for more than 25 years. The wetlaid technology used to produce these materials is unique, adapted from the papermaking processes used by James Cropper PLC for 170 years to manufacture globally renowned luxury papers. The unique flexibility of this process and quality of fiber dispersion in the finished product makes TFP a leader in the advanced nonwovens market, enabling the broadest range of advanced nonwovens in the world from weights as low as w gsm. The diversity of this range and their associated properties enables TFP’s nonwovens to be used across a wide variety of industries ranging from aerospace and defense to automotive, energy, industrial, construction and healthcare. Typical applications for TFP’s materials include delivering a high quality and functional surface finish in composites, passive fire protection and high temperature thermal insulation, as well as offering solutions for cryogenic storage & power generation.