Covestro AG has won two awards and Tonello secured the top prize of ‘Launch of the Year’ at the ITMA Future Materials Awards 2015, held in Milan recently.

Celebrating the best innovations in the technical textile industry, this second edition of the annual awards, which is hosted by WTiN was attended by more than 200 guests and saw a host of leading companies and research institutes honoured for their cutting-edge products, processes and treatments. Tonello’s victory was in recognition of its Water Brush process, which uses a chemical-free approach to achieve an authentic vintage look on jeans.

Covestro (formerly Bayer Material Science) won the ‘Innovator of the Year’ prize, and tied with Separex for ‘Sustainable Process’. Both Covestro’s awards were for its development of Impranil eco, a new class of waterborne polyurethane dispersions for textile coating which comprises up to 65 per cent renewable resources.

Separex, a French SME specialising in sustainable high pressure carbon dioxide technologies, picked up the Sustainable Process award for its approach to the use of CO2. Separex has developed a reverse dyeing process which allows discolouration of waste polyester textiles, allowing the production of higher quality recycled textiles.

There was another tie, in the category of Sports Textiles, where Coolcore and Europlasma shared the title for their innovations. Coolcore was picked for its performance fabrics for athletic and everyday apparel, developed without the use of added chemicals or topical agents, while Europlasma received the nod for its PlasmaGuard technology, a high-tech process which uses no water and a minimum of energy and chemicals.