TEPAR Success Story; From Recycled Banknotes to Extremely High Value Filament Yarns

Interview with Mr Hasan Tepe – CEO at Tepar Filament Yarns Corp

Tepar has been established in 1992 as an exporting company for cotton and textile wastes for European banknotes. With the booming of denim cut and saw industry, a tremendous denim fabric clipping has been accumulated.

The entrepreneurship of Tepar owners has turned this waste denim clipping into extremely high value-added products such as banknotes, high-security paper and bleached absorbing cotton.

1. Please let us know more details about Tepar Filament Company, history and success story.

I am pleased to inform you that, today Tepar is the leading functional yarn texturizer from 5 den up to 8000 Denier (ATY and DTY) of Turkey. Despite the fact that Tepar has been established only 29 years ago, with our vision and enthusiasm for innovation we have reached a dominant position in functional filament yarns for active sports, home textile, Athleisure, Medical as well as military applications.

The real industrial success of Tepar has started with filament yarn texturing from the beginning of 2003. Air-jet textured filament yarns have been produced mainly for the automotive interior fabrics. This extremely quality conscious and tough industry has made Tepar a leading quality textured yarn manufacturer. The textured yarns of Tepar have been exported to Europe as well as the USA and even Australia. In addition to the automotive interior fabrics, the local carpet industry and local home textile manufacturers were the next level customers for our air-jet textured yarns.

Our innovative approach for the texturing and research and development collaboration with the textile engineering department of the leading technical university of Turkey (ITU-Istanbul Technical University) has lead us to develop very novel yarns for the home textile industry.

The expansion into draw texturing was inevitable for Tepar. Due to this need, we have invested in Barmag draw-texturing machines. We have chosen the most flexible and quality-oriented machine types to develop novel and functional yarns for the sportswear. As soon as the draw texturing machines have started processing yarns, our innovative engineering has developed high value-added filament yarns.

Our close cooperation with leading filament producers, we are obtaining high-value POY and FDY supply yarns and texturing them with our expertise and creating very high value textured filament yarns. We are also providing experience-based process feedback to these filament yarns pinners to improve their production.
Polyester textured monofilament for home textiles, bridal wear as well as health-care products is one of the exclusive products of Tepar. As Tepar able to draw-texturize mother yarn of 200f10 and split it into 10 spools of 20 dtex monofilaments, Tepar is the only monofilament texturizer in Turkey.

Yarn coating is also another innovative activity area of Tepar. For outdoor fabrics, PVC or TPU coated high tenacity filament yarns are used in outdoor seating fabric, shade fabrics and table mats for luxury dining tables. Glass or carbon filament yarns can also be coated with flame retardant polymers for wallpapers and composite applications. Hence Tepar yarn is also penetrating into technical textiles.

2. Let us know which kind of products you offer to textile and fashion sector? (what is your range of products?)

Getting energy and enthusiasm from our motto “Live Innovation”, Tepar is continuously developing innovative functional yarns for fashion, sports and military applications. Together with DuPont, the world leader in high-value fibers, our yarns for fashion apparel and active sports have the joint logo of COOLMAX® and THERMOLITE®. COOLMAX® brand and THERMOLITE® brand are engineered to keep you comfortable longer at different temperatures. Our portfolio of technology solutions, backed by distinctive new consumer-oriented branding, can be used across a variety of garments and other apparel items.

The following are some of our innovative yarns backed by COOLMAX® and THERMOLITE®.
THERMOLITE® ALL-SEASON technology is engineered to keep the wearer warm and dry, helping to optimize performance. These DTY yarns have the yarn count range of 83f100 167f200.

THERMOLITE® CORE technology provides lightweight warmth for all activities. It offers functional insulation with excellent durability. THERMOLITE® CORE technology is engineered to keep the wearer warmer longer. The FDY yarn at 67F48 yarn count

THERMOLITE® INFRARED technology is an innovative solution that is solar activated by the sun, or artificial light sources, using a unique blend of near-infrared (NIR) yarns with proprietary additives. The yarns absorb the NIR rays to raise the temperature of the garment, while the system’s integrated high- quality insulation traps air and minimizes heat loss. DTY yarn is available either 83f72 or 167f144.

COOLMAX® ECOMADE TECHNOLOGY, Garments made with COOLMAX® EcoMade technology keep the wearer cool, dry and comfortable as body temperatures fluctuate. A recent webinar hosted by The LYCRA Company provided an in-depth look at the industry-leading moisture-wicking technology, which brings unique cooling properties to jeans, activewear, socks and other apparel categories while delivering environmental benefits.

The team broke down the science of how the human body regulates heat; explained how durable COOLMAX® technology absorbs and wicks moisture to the outside of the fabric so it can evaporate quickly and keep the wearer cool and dry; and showed how COOLMAX® technology stacks up against other offerings.

37.5 Technology: 37.5® technology is a textile innovation that improves the performance of your body. When you make an effort, moisture from transpiration is released by the pores of the skin and allows the body temperature to drop.

In fact, every gram of evaporated sweat releases 580 calories of stored heat. If this water vapour is not eliminated from your clothes, shoes or gloves, it builds up and creates an uncomfortable moist microclimate.
37.5® technology improves on the body’s natural cooling mechanism. The body produces sweat in order to lower its temperature – 37.5® technology eliminates the microclimate created by your clothes.

How does it work?

The 37.5® active particles trigger two unique processes that no other technology achieves. Firstly, they attract water away from your skin using electrostatic force. Next, they absorb the infrared energy naturally emitted by your body, which heats up these particles and speeds up evaporation. In addition, these active particles can increase the total surface area of a garment to around 1000 square metres.

This increase in the surface area combined with these active powers is the reason no other textile innovation can achieve the performance of 37.5® in terms of speed of drying.

The technical fabric created using 37.5® technology allows you to wear a breathable garment that removes transpiration before it can stagnate in sensitive areas of your body. By capturing human infrared rays, the textile fibres used make it possible to eliminate water vapour.

Tepar has developed some miraculous yarns with cationacally dyeable polyester filament yarns. They are some sort of mélange yarns and they have been branded as DISCAT®. It is the ideal way to create multicoloured fabrics with a one-step dyeing process. These mélange yarns are the perfect solution for making soft and comfortable on-trend sports and fashionwear. DISCAT is available in 83f72 , 110F144, 167F144, 330f96 and 660f192 dtex range. They have also subtle different versions as KARADENIZ, MARMARA and MARATHON which varies in colour contrast ranging from regular long, regular short and regular extra long colour stripes.

At Tepar, the full extend of fiber engineering is brought to the use of textile designers. As an example of this pioneering engineering show is the MIRUS® Technology that provides heat insulation material with lightweight and warm touch by the internal air layer hence it provides; the high hollow rate of at least 60%, quick-absorbing and drying by large surface area and extra soft touch.

This has been realised with the bi-component fiber structure with proprietary cross-sectional shape. This special approach guarantees high performance texturing to create extra stretch and recovery characteristics. By special knitting and finishing the fibers creates perfect heart insulation and special softness excelling the comparable wool and all other filament yarns. Mirıs is a fine count DTY with yarn count ranges of 83f36, 167f72 and 330F144.

The alternative polymeric material is certainly a special focus point for Tepar. We are one of the leading PBT (PolybutheleneTeraphtalate) yarn texturiser producing a wide range of yarn count such as 22F9, 55F24, 78F24, 156F48, 330F96 and 660F192.

The Brand name for PBT textured yarn is VELOX® PBT Stretch Yarns. Polybutylene terephthalate (PBT) Elastic, soft and resistant and takes dye well, even when blended with other types of fibers. The special yarn is chlorine resistant and quick-drying making it a very suitable material for swimwear and beachwear. It makes long-lasting fabrics including denim.

As billions of plastic bottles go into landfills every year, another valuable focus of activity at Tepar is the sustainability that makes our World a safe to live. In this respect, 100% RECYCLED YARNS are processed and offered to our esteemed World-class customers. REPREVE is the leading, most trusted, branded performance fiber made from recycled materials (including plastic bottles). REPREVE can be combined with technologies such as moisture management, thermal comfort and engineered stretch.

The knitters and weavers can embed more than one technology into most fibers for edge-to-edge performance. Another sustainable approach at Tepar is the unique technology RENUTM that applies enables recycling old garment and textile into newly born recycled polyester and polyester material while the conventional recycling approach can only use selected pet bottle wastes to be put into its recycling process. RENU is available in yarn count ranges of 83F72, 110f96, 167F144 and 55F24.

Technical textiles is another prime activity area of Tepar. COFIL® is an Environmentally friendly and Flame-Retardant PVC Polyester Coated Yarn. As an example of this it the Sunscreen which is a PVC coated polyester woven fabric with special functions such as fire retardant, UV blockage, reducing the heat gain and glare, strong colourfastness.

Military applications is another majör area of technical textiles. Designed for living and built to last, the original durable DURAFIL® fabric has proven performance in many of the world’s toughest environments. Made with high tenacity air jet textured polyamide 6,6 yarns in a range of sizes – 370, 560, 760 and 1000 dtex.

Last but not the least the SAKURA® textured split yarn has a soft touch and excellent drape and superiors and effect compared to the more conventional monofilament textured yarns. It is no doubt that SAKURA is the only monofilament yarn that enables the bridal wear designers with lightness, naivety and boldness for their designs.

3. How many percent of your product export to international markets? Explain more about your export destinations and demand in the export market

As of today Tepar is exporting nearly 60% of its production capacity to all over the world from Spain to Russia, from Israel to Australia. It is our firm target that we would like to export more than 80% of the innovative products as Tepar is a world-class texturiser. The high-value weavers and knitters are still based in Europe and we would like to supply our functional yarns. We also believe that the European high-value weavers and knitter do provide us high-value feedback to improve our innovative yarns.

Here, I would like to give an example of COFIL. A valuable European customer has requested us to develop flame retardant PVC coated high tenacity PET yarns for beach upholstery. We took this request seriously and made an investment in R&D activity together with a university textile engineering department. Within a year we have developed this product and presented to the Spanish customer. Since then we have delivered more than 50 tons of this high-value yarn. We are very happy to develop this yarn as it gave us other opportunities with customers from USA and far east.

4. How do you evaluate Textile chemicals and auxiliary industry in Turkey?

Turkey is no doubt a major textile manufacturing country with more than 22 billion USD export per year. Today, Turkish textile industry is leaning towards technical textiles to improve profitability and long-term continuity. However, the current COVID-19 pandemics has clearly showed that the international and national logistics is a very critical element in sustaining life and hence Turkey has now once more realized its strategic geographical location as being very close to the major consumers of textiles goods. The strategic geographical location is making Turkey a major textile supplier for Europe once more after the late 1990s and beginning of the year 2000s.

Turkey has already many well-established cotton spinners, world-class filament yarn producers, innovative texturizers, most modern weavers, flexible knitters and up-to-date textile finishing plants. The Turkish cut-and-sew industry has now improved itself with automated spreading, cutting and when possible sewing systems. The Turkish fashion designers are now world-class with their ateliers and fashion show catwalks in Paris, London, Madrid as well as in New York. With all these modern production infrastructure Turkish textile industry has taken off to supply and service to all European consumers.

We are also very proud to mention that the textile chemicals and all auxiliary materials are developed and produced in Turkey. This has been largely possible by the investment of international textile chemical producers in Turkey. Thanks to their investment, local engineers have gained experience and hence developed further the textile auxiliaries starting from dyeing pigments, to softening agents as well as hydrophobic and/or hydrophilic making additives.

5. How do you evaluate filament yarn sector in Turkey?

Within the last 20 years, Turkey has been evolved from net importer of filament yarns to net exporter. Today Turkey is producing more than 1300 tons/day filament yarn varying from PET POY to PA6.6 FDY to PP FDY. Here I have to also mention the acrylic staple and filament yarn success of Turkey. The Turkish company AKSA is the largest acrylic staple fiber producer in Europe. Whit this leadership, Aksa has currently developed acrylic filament yarns for carpet and outdoor upholstery market. This is indeed a world-class innovation from a Turkish company.

As Tepar, we have been importing our POY and FDY feedstock from Europe, Asia as well as local producers. However, we plan to invest in POY/FDY spinning in very near future. Our focus will be novel dope dyed spinning equipment.

6. the Middle East and Africa is an important destination for textile products, how do you evaluate textile and fashion industry in this region?

Tepar has been delivering textured yarns to Israel, Egypt, Sri Lanka and India for many years now. Especially the international fashion brands such as H&M, Inditex, Nike, Adidas has been requesting our novel yarns for their fabrics and therefore the fashion apparel manufacturers have been demanding Tepar yarns from their weavers and knitters.
It is our vision that the fashion apparel market in the Middle East and Africa will grow steadily. We are in close contact with Tunisian and Algerian textile companies to supply textured yarns.

7. COVID 19 shows us we should rely more on sustainability and green products, how we can improve sustainability in the textile and fashion industry?
Indeed COVID-19 has affected all our lives and ways of making business. We have also experienced that such a pandemic had tremendous trauma on our planet. COVID-19 clearly showed us that our planet is a very small garden. A minute virus able to stop all life. Therefore, we must take care of our small garden. Tepar is doing its best to supply sustainable textured yarns to all customers.

It is our firm belief and strategy to invest more on sustainable yarn as well as environmentally friendly production. In this direction, we have invested in photovoltaic panels and soon will install them on top of our plant to harvest solar energy. Tepar is geared to produce at least 30% of its total production from recycled raw materials. Please do remember that Tepar has started the industrial business with recycled textile good.

I have also to add that Tepar is also planning to go into biopolymers for environment protection by reasonable disintegration.