VANCOUVER – At Planet Textiles 2018 held here yesterday in Canada, Australian start-up Nanollose revealed for the first time a selection of knitted fabrics made from microbial cellulose derived from coconut waste.
We reported last year that the Perth-based company had raised funding for its ‘plant-free and environmentally friendly’ alternatives to the common viscose feedstocks, but Planet Textiles was the first time that its ‘Nullabor’ branded fabrics have been shown in public.
Nanollose chief executive, Alfie Germano told over 400 Planet Textiles delegates: “We identified a source of cellulose raw material (coconuts) and made a fibre in a very quick time-frame. But there’s nothing like a deadline, and so to be in front of you all today, I’m very happy to say that not only do we now have a fibre, we’ve used industrial methods to spin this fibre into a yarn and produced the very first batch of fabrics to bring to this event.”
