[00:00]
An aerial view shows the specialist production facility. Inside, textile fibres and pilot manufacturing equipment are shown before John Somerville speaks beside the machinery.
John Somerville, Founder and CEO of Fab Materials: I’m John, founder of Fab Materials, and I’m here today taking mixed textile waste and converting that into a fibre that can be used to make fibreboard. And that’s in place of virgin timber. It’s in place of trees.
[00:21]
John Roberts stands inside the pilot facility with textile-processing equipment behind him.
John Roberts, Director at Roberts Recycling: I’m John Roberts from Roberts Recycling. We are one of the country’s leading textile recyclers, and we’re here today looking at a pilot line for MDF, which is one of the solutions that we think is going to help fight the textile waste problem.
[00:34]
John Somerville explains the project as views show mixed textile material being moved through the pilot equipment.
John Somerville: So at Fab, our vision is to make all the textiles recyclable. As part of this pilot, we are using post-consumer waste we’ve saved from incineration. It’s great to be working with a specialist who can actually provide us that mixed, low-grade but high-quality textiles for recycling.
[00:55]
Processed textile fibres and manufacturing machinery are shown inside the facility.
John Roberts: The textiles that we used in the pilot today were non-rewearable textiles. They were beyond repair. So to see them produced into such a well-made product is so exciting because it’s actually replaced the virgin timber fibres.
[01:10]
John Somerville holds up an early, small sample of the textile-based board and then presents a much larger, smoother finished panel.
John Somerville: A year ago, we were making small, relatively coarse boards from textile fibre. Now we’re making large, smooth, homogeneous, machinable boards, which is what the industry requires.
[01:24]
Views show the full-sized board and the operating pilot line before John Roberts returns on screen.
John Roberts: The fact that we were able to come to the pilot line today and see it happening, touch the wood and smell it and see it, is so exciting because it means that there isn’t a long delay between the concept to reality. It’s happening right now, and we’ve seen it first-hand.
