Corn Being Used to Produce Clothing and Other Textiles

Eric Heisler
Greensboro (N.C.) News & Record

July 17, 2001

U.S. textile manufacturers are exploring an innovative way of making
clothing, furniture upholstery, and other products from corn.

The
idea is more than a novelty for a wide range of groups who have an
interest. For environmentalists, the process is more eco-friendly than
making polyester from oil. For textile companies such as Unifi Inc. of
Yadkinville, North Carolina, it will mean less dependence on foreign oil
companies for raw materials. And for farmers, the product will offer a
new end use for a large domestic crop.

"There's great benefits to this," said Jan Pegram of North Carolina State University's College of Textiles. "It's a way of making a synthetic product from natural, renewable resources, instead of having to use a byproduct of the oil industry."

The product, which has been named Natureworks, is the brainchild of Minnesota-based Cargill Dow. Last year, researchers there found that the starch in corn could be used to form a fiber that's very similar to conventional polyester. Unifi's role in the process will be to texture the raw yarn so that it's suitable to knit or weave into fabric.

Along with the environmental and economic benefits of the substance, Cargill Dow has found that Natureworks can be used in an array of products, from clothing and carpets to non-textile items such as plastics. What's more, the company has found that such products have properties that make them appealing to consumers.

"Consumers have said that they find the product interesting and unique," said Michael O'Brien, a spokesman for Cargill Dow. What's not to like, he said, about upholstery fabric that is less flammable and more resilient? Or shirts that help disperse sweat into the air?

Similar to Polyester

For Unifi and other companies, producing Natureworks yarn will cost twice as much as producing traditional polyester. But company officials see benefits down the road.

Although oil prices have fluctuated wildly in recent years, the price of corn has been stable, noted Lee Gordon, a senior vice president at Unifi. And oil prices are expected to increase over the next decade, he added. Shifting the company's production mix toward Natureworks would mean buying less oil products.

"We hope it means we will be less dependent on foreign oil," Gordon said. "The price of corn has not changed in years."

Gordon is impressed with how similar Natureworks is to polyester and the features it offers. "It looks, acts, and feels like polyester," he said. "There's a few subtle differences, but it behaves almost exactly the same."

Unifi also hopes the production of Natureworks could help make the company more competitive with foreign producers in the years ahead. The company lost $28.5 million during the first three months of 2001, and in March it was forced cut 750 jobs under pressure from low-cost Asian imports and poor retail sales.

To prevent a recurrence of that kind of scenario, Unifi is trying to shift from commodity polyester to higher-end, differentiated products such as Natureworks. Other products Unifi has introduced include yarn made from recycled Coke bottles and polyester that looks and feels like cotton or wool.

Wider Benefits

But the potential benefit of Natureworks goes beyond the bottom line of Unifi and other textile companies. Unlike polyester, Natureworks is biodegradable, which means it will decompose relatively quickly in a landfill.

For oil-based products, that process can take hundreds of years. "Archaeologists might be digging up polyester many years from now," said Gordon.

The process of manufacturing Natureworks is also safer and more environmentally sound than that of some other textiles, O'Brien pointed out. Natureworks production, for example, emits less carbon dioxide than the manufacture of oil products.

Such benefits helped Unifi win a Technology-of-the-Year award from the U.S. Department of Energy earlier this year and an endorsement by the environmental group Greenpeace.

Cargill Dow has built a new plant in Nebraska where the production cycle of Natureworks will begin. The company will first extract the corn plant's natural sugar, then ferment it to make lactic acid. The lactic acid will be formed into string that can produce fibers.

Finally, pellets of the product will be treated like polyester—melted and extruded to form a raw yarn. That's where Unifi and its Yadkinville plant comes in. There, the raw yarn will be twisted and processed additionally to give it strength and the proper texture.

Once the yarn has been processed at Unifi, it can't be distinguished from polyester by the untrained eye. "There's barely a difference," said Lincoln Miller, a concept development manager for Unifi.

The rest of the process is no different than for polyester. Fabric companies will knit or weave the yarn into material, which will be cut and sewn into clothing.

Some non-textile Natureworks products are already available to consumers. California-based Biocorp is making plastic trash bags, cups, and dinnerware that decompose. Sony has been wrapping its mini-discs in Natureworks packaging, and Dunlop has used it in golfball coverings. The fabric should be available to consumers in clothing and furniture by next year.

Meanwhile, Cargill Dow said it plans to expand the process to other continents, where sugar beets or rice might be used as the raw material.

Copyright 2001 Greensboro News & Record